Their words, your words
Their words, your words

Their words, your words

We watched Dash & Lily on Net­flix a short time ago. Neat little series of half-hour epis­odes. There were some really neat moments in there. One that stands out is where Lily con­fronts her middle school bully, and talks about how hard it was for her. He says some­thing that’s kind of a shock to her sys­tem, an epi­phany. A bit of a spoil­er here, coz she says, “I was only 12,” and he says, “So was I.”

This is one of the most import­ant things my mum taught me. Any time I talked to her about y’know, some­thing someone else said or did that upset me, she used to remind me that every­one is going through some­thing, every­one has some­thing they’re deal­ing with. And she was­n’t say­ing it to dis­miss my feel­ings, but just remind­ing me… Just as I have stuff I’m deal­ing with, so does that per­son who said that thing. And that was always a huge help in Ummm… learn­ing to not take things quite so per­son­ally? Feel­ing empathy.… for that person?

This concept was built upon later when I worked with this theatre dir­ect­or who said, “Any­thing anoth­er per­son says or does tells you some­thing about them. Not you. Them.” and she said, how you react to it, tells you some­thing about you.” Those words have stuck with me, and I taught my kids that, too: Any­thing anoth­er per­son says or does tells you some­thing about them. How you react to it, tells you some­thing about you. That concept, coupled with Every­body has stuff in their life that they’re deal­ing with… Well, I would­n’t really call it my philo­sophy of life, but it cer­tainly has helped me with try­ing to under­stand people.