Your name is Robert.
You’ve been working for 10 years as an accountant. Your hard work and sleepless nights have finally paid off: last week you landed the promotion you’ve been seeking for all these years.
Two days ago, you took your daughter to school for the first time. You tried not to get emotional. You summoned all of your manliest thoughts, but failed to defeat the feels-onslaught of a 5-year-old walking, with her Spongebob backpack, to class for the first time.
The next day, you got a call from your mother. She is sick; they’ve found “something” in a recent scan. It has you thinking and worried around the clock. It’s the first time one of your parents has gotten sick, and it has you reflecting a lot on your own mortality and the time you have with your parents and your daughter.
You’ve experienced a whirlwind of emotions: joy, sadness and fear.
And now here you are, in anticipation, walking to your office in the downtown New York, for your first day as a manager.
On the sidewalk walking towards you is a stranger.
Now you are the stranger.
You are looking at Robert. You know nothing about Robert or any of his trials and tribulations. To you, he is just another stranger who appears deep in thought.
This is everyday life. You are surrounded by people with complex thoughts, feelings, emotions, who are in the middle of a long journey of their own.
So be nice and try not to judge. Every stranger is on a unique high or low of that journey. And that stranger could have easily been you.
-Sean Kernan
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