You Don't Know Their Heart

Somewhere in the middle of a conflict, your brain starts writing fiction.

They're just an angry person. They must be carrying around a lot of bitterness. That comment was passive-aggressive, obviously. They didn't invite you to the thing, so they clearly don't want you around. They didn't credit your idea in the meeting, which means they're setting up to take it for themselves.

You've done this. I've done this. Someone says or doesn't say one small thing, and within about four seconds we've authored a full backstory for them, cast ourselves as the wronged party, and started gathering evidence.

I'm in the middle of one of these right now, as I write this. A real conflict, the ongoing kind. And what caught my attention wasn't the conflict – it was my own reaction to it, which is not the reaction I would have had a few years ago. The litany running in my head used to be the one above. This time it was a different question: what good does it actually do to assume the state of someone's heart?

What does assuming the worst actually buy you?

That's the question I keep coming back to. If I decide they're acting out of anger toward me, does that assumption help me be kinder to them? Does it help me be more generous? Does it make me more likely to repair the thing, or even to want to?

It never does. It does the opposite.

Most of what stings was never aimed at you

A lot of the time, reconciliation isn't even necessary, because the slight was imagined. Not all of them – some conflicts are real and have to be worked. But so many of the things we're certain someone did to us turn out to be things they did while barely thinking of us at all. They're carrying their own burdens. They've got their own challenges, their own bad week, their own quiet catastrophe you know nothing about. They were not thinking about you nearly as much as you were thinking about you.

People are complicated, and we do not know their hearts. We just don't. We get a few visible behaviors and we fill in everything underneath them with a story of our own making, and then we react to the story.

So I've started declining to write the story.

This isn't purely a decision, exactly. There's a decision in it – I do choose it – but mostly it comes down to how I let myself think about the other person in the first place. At worst, on a bad day, I just won't guess. I'll sit in the not-knowing and refuse to fill the blank. On a good day I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume something generous: the trauma they might be carrying, the burden weighing on them, the hope of theirs that just got dashed in a way I can't see.

You already know how to do this

You do this at work all the time, on your better days. The teammate whose Slack reply lands cold – you decide they were heads-down, not hostile, and you're usually right. The missed deadline – you assume a blocker before you assume laziness. The decision that got made without you in the room – a calendar conflict, not a snub. "Assume positive intent" is practically laminated on the wall of every team you've been on.

It's the same move. You've just never turned it on the person you're actually in conflict with – the one who's genuinely gotten under your skin – which is exactly the person it's hardest to extend it to, and exactly the person it would change the most.

Is it sometimes naive? Sure. I might occasionally believe the best about someone who didn't earn it. I've made my peace with that. I would rather move through the world extending grace and be wrong now and then than move through it suspicious and turn out to be right. And I'll admit there's something almost selfish in it, because it simply makes me happier to think about people that way. It's lighter. I sleep better.

The strange bonus is that it tends to be self-fulfilling. When you treat people as though they're kind and acting in good faith, a surprising number of them rise to it. You hand someone the better version of themselves and they often take it.

The one sentence to stop on

So if you're in the middle of a conflict right now – doesn't matter with whom, doesn't matter what it's about – here's what I'd offer. The next time you catch your brain starting the backstory, stop on the one sentence you can actually stand behind: I don't know what's going on inside them. That's it. That's true. Stay there for a second before you move.

Then choose to believe the best about them. Or, on the days that's too much of a stretch, just choose not to believe the worst.

You'll carry less. You'll sleep better. And whether or not the conflict ever fully resolves – I find it often quietly does – you'll be a steadier, more decent presence to everyone else in your life in the meantime.