Give a Little Grace
Recently my brother and I inherited something that was valuable enough it demanded a professional appraisal. My brother set up the appointment and, when the day came, I followed the map to the address he had sent me. When I arrived I realizedI would need a little help navigating to the actual door of the business, so I called the owner.
Imagine my surprise when, not only was he not expecting me, he was not expecting me in a pretty rude and condescending way. I did my best to respond in a calm manner, and eventually, through even more levels of exasperation, he agreed to meet up with me.
Let’s just say he wasn’t the most warm and welcoming a person should be when you’re about to conduct business. I was fine with it though, I wasn’t planning to be his new best friend, I really just needed my thing appraised.
And then something happened.
He left to go get a magnifying glass and when he came back he sheepishly apologized. It turns out his wife had set up the appointment and had forgotten to tell him. He was, for lack of a better word, mortified for how he had treated me.
It’s fine, I told him. We all have hard days and obviously I caught him on one of his.
Which it turns out, couldn’t have been more true. His daughter had just had surgery that morning, he was in the midst of his own inheritance nightmare with his recently deceased mother’s estate, and, to top it all off, we’re living in a pandemic.
Life is hard right now.
No one is functioning at their optimal peak. If you have school age children at all, I feel like you should get 100 extra bonus points just for making it through the day. If you’re a small business owner, or worried about your job, another 100 extra points. If you’re worried about your own health or the health of one of your family members, 10,000 extra points.
Of course, no is actually handing out points. Or cupcakes. Or even gold stars.
Instead, we end every single day with the ever present existential dread that seems to be blanketing our entire existence as humans right now.
Which is all just to say, let’s be kinder to one another.
Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Let’s not publicly shame or call out every negative interaction we encounter.
Let’s give each other some grace.
When I responded to this man, who is really just doing the best he can (like most of us right now), with empathy, he was shocked.
Is this what we’ve come to as humans? Is kindness really a surprise to us?
And more importantly…
Is that what we want for ourselves?
I would argue that no, that’s not what we want for humanity.
And so. I’ll say it just one more time.
The next time you feel slighted or wronged, maybe, just maybe, that’s not the intention of the person you’re interacting with.
Maybe you’re just accidentally caught in the wake of someone’s dumpster fire of a situation, in which case, they don’t need you fanning the flames, they either need you to step out of the way and let them be or, they need a little help putting out the fire.
Either way…in all cases…I feel confident in saying…they could probably use a little grace.
In other news…
When the pandemic happened we shut our doors to all agritourism activities, which seems almost cruel considering what people need most right now isn’t isolation, it’s goat cuddles and goat yoga. But, silver linings playbook…we took the Summer to focus on our YouTube documentary series, Chasing Meadows. We’ve published four episodes so far with lots more on the way.
If you’re looking for a great show to watch that gives an open and honest look at what it means for our family to run a first-generation dairy farm while we chase our dream of packing horses into the mountains, then this show is for you. PLUS, the music showcases a whole bunch of incredibly talented local bands (including Matthew’s old rock band!)