A wonderful priest pointed something out the other day to me. The truth is we interact with many people in our lives - some who we're close to and some we're not so close to. But regardless of the nature of our relationship with a given individual, some of our interactions will leave a better impression upon us than other interactions. Sometimes it is tempting to presume malicious intentions on the part of the other person when thinking about an exchange that did not go quite to our liking.
It may seem obvious but what the priest told me was that such malice is generally not reflective of that person's true nature. It's all too easy to focus on a few interactions that went badly and assume that the other person is just inherently despicable. It's also all too easy to overlook the many interactions that went well and take the other person's good intentions for granted because they're "expected" to be that way "all the time." The good things the other person has done most of the time is who they really are. That's all we have to remind ourselves of, lest we start to allow ourselves to overthink certain conversations and let our minds play tricks on us.
Mark 1: 21-28
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