The car that cut you off.

You are driving to work. A car swerves in front of you, too close, and speeds off. Your hands tighten on the wheel. “What a jerk.”

At the grocery store, a parent ignores their screaming child while staring at their phone. You sigh loudly.

At a café, the person behind the counter gets your order wrong and barely looks at you.

Now imagine you learn the driver was rushing to the hospital after a call about their father. The parent had just received a message that they’d lost their job. The barista was finishing a double shift, worried about rent.

Most of the time, we never learn the rest of the story. We see the action, not the reason, and fill in the gap with a judgment about the person.

We give ourselves context easily (“I was late, I was stressed”) and give it to others far less often. Simply remembering that others have context too can change how we respond.

Compassion doesn’t mean accepting harm or giving up boundaries. It means holding open the possibility that there is more going on than we can see.

The visible and the invisible

A brief history of understanding others

• 1759 — Philosopher Adam Smith writes about sympathy, imagining ourselves in another person’s situation, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
• 1973 — In the “Good Samaritan” study, John Darley and Daniel Batson find that seminary students in a hurry were far less likely to stop for someone in need. Circumstances, not character, made the biggest difference.
• 1977 — Psychologist Lee Ross names the fundamental attribution error: judging people by their actions while overlooking their situation.
• 2000s — Researchers study compassion training and find that practicing kindness toward others can increase helpful behavior.

Everyone you meet is carrying something you cannot see.