Think about a time you were extremely happy,
Even if it was just a week or even a few days,
When everything was going right in your life.
Maybe it was when you were starting to fall in love with someone,
Or a time when things were flowing in your career.
Think about how you felt then,
Open,
Calm,
Happy.
Now imagine,
During that same time,
If someone was rude to you,
Or cut you off in traffic,
Or something else went wrong.
You probably didn't flip out.
You didn't yell or scream at anyone.
You probably just let it go.
That's because when you're happy and you feel good about life,
There isn't a need to attack.
There's a higher capacity to deal with things.
Now think about the opposite.
Think about a time when everything felt like it was going wrong,
When you were mad at the world.
Every little inconvenience would send you over the edge,
Right?
You'd start replaying how this person did that,
And how that person did this.
Maybe even hearing yourself talk poorly about people and say things you normally wouldn't.
That's because when we're miserable,
Our mind is wired to tear others down,
To externalize the chaos,
To blame everything for your unhappiness.
We've all been here before.
But when we're good,
There's more space.
We don't need to offload our pain onto others.
I want to tell you this because when people try to tear you down,
It doesn't actually have anything to do with you.
It has everything to do with the bad things they perceive are happening in their own lives.
So in short,
Hurt people hurt people.
This is a powerful thing to understand.
Because over time,
You start to see people who bully or criticize you differently.
You begin to feel bad for them.
Maybe even feel compassion for them.
This helped me a lot in my own healing.
It helped me detach from other people's poor behavior.
And it helped me start noticing how I do the same thing.
How I sometimes tear others down in small ways when I'm trying to manage my own negative moods.
And when we see that we all do the same thing,
We stop feeling so separate from each other.
We understand.
And that understanding lets us give grace.
Not just to others,
But to ourselves too,
Especially in the hard moments.
Happy people don't hurt people.
Hurt people hurt people.
