When I was 15, I remember feeling a prickly, annoyed feeling when I saw my gram’s van at my bus stop. I walked off, avoided eye contact, and gave the shortest answers I could until we drove around the block to our house. It felt like the drive was so slow. I didn’t want to talk about my day. I just wanted to head in and take a nap – my after school routine. Anything that put me out of that routine made me annoyed.
When I was 16, my gram would never again be there to pick me up from the bus. She passed away in 2011. Through the rain, snow, and blazing sun, I walked up from that bus stop alone more often than not. It took even longer and I became even more annoyed every time I didn’t see my mom’s car down at the bus stop. It seemed that no matter the situation, I was ticked off. Being picked up wasn’t good enough and walking alone made me angry.
I was insatiable because I was unappreciative.
Since the second I knew that things were getting bad with Gram, I wished I could have her back. For years after, there were so many things I had wished I could had said. For years after, I was angry at myself for being so petty after school, for not seizing those little moments I got to have with her that were priceless to me now. Regardless of the problems and annoyances I felt as an angsty, misunderstood teen, how I treated her was still my responsibility. How I would feel when she was gone was my responsibility and on me to carry for as long as I remembered her.
In 2017, my mom had a stroke. I remember the paralyzing fear of imagining a reality without her. As a child, many of my friends’ parents had divorced. I sometimes wondered whose house I would live at in the case that mine ever did, too. I was lucky to grow up in a basically conflict-free, loving home and those worries were never my reality. But it felt all too familiar to imagine a life separate from one of my parents.
In an instant, none of our petty arguments mattered. I used to be so annoyed by the way she would always text me to see if I arrived safe and she’d panic if she didn’t hear from me. Why won’t she treat me like an adult, I angrily thought. In fact, she was. Being concerned for someone’s well being has never been something limited to parents and their little kids.
We are lucky that my mom left the hospital relatively unscathed. I visited her on the last day before she went home. I drove in 45 minutes from work to spend about an hour before packing for a trip. Seeing my mom in a hospital room hurt because it made me understand that she was vulnerable, just like everyone else. Her heart and her head and her veins were delicate. She could have been gone, but by chance she was still here. One of my favorite delicate memories was seeing her fly into the bathroom to put some lipstick on and fix her hair when I got there, those little things that we can still control.
After the incident, I committed myself to developing more patience with my mom. To heed her warnings with appreciation as a sign of love, not to patronize or overprotect me.
Everyday we get to decide how to treat someone else. We’re surrounded by people who look on as we suffer, people who are constantly annoyed with us for one reason or another, and people who extend love and support for us even beyond their means.
It seems too cliché to say that we should treat everyone as we’d like to be treated. Besides, it’s too self-centered. I’m only going to treat you the way you should treat me. Can we ever care for someone else without thinking about what’s in it for us?
A major part of focusing on treating people well is to acknowledge when we’ve hurt them. Recently, I listened to a podcast episode on apologies. At the end of the episode, one of the hosts, Jenna, decided to call up an old college friend to apologize for a few instances of treating her poorly, which she realized after reflecting on the situations close to a decade later. Though Jenna and her friend were on good terms, her friend was not expecting the apology and was overcome with emotion on air. It wasn’t until then that Jenna realized how long her friend had carried the weight of those situations and just how powerful an apology was to lifting that weight.
‘I’m sorry’ has power, if we let it have the power it deserves. Often, we’re caught up in our justifications for why we made a choice that hurt someone else. Our pride and our ego makes us feel justified. But is it ever worth being right if it means that someone else, usually someone we care about, is left being wrong?
As much as I don’t want to quote him, Louis CK wrote,
“When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t”
Every single one of us can find an excuse for why we did what we did. The most important lesson is to understand whether you value being right over making things right.
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