Look around you. What do you see?
I bet that you see at least one other person. What do you see about them? What is the first thing you notice?
“They look happy”, “She looks so smart”, “He looks lonely”, “They look like they’re having fun”, “He has a lot of money”, “She’s so trendy”, “She must have a lot of friends” … I could go on.
Except no matter what you notice, I’m sure it follows these lines. It’s external, it’s an appearance and a surface impression. That’s all you can see from a glimpse, but don’t stop there.
What if they aren’t happy? It could be that they are laughing and masking pain by remembering the good times instead of the sad. What if he isn’t lonely? Instead, he’s waiting for the love of his life to walk through and sit down and join him for coffee like they do each morning. What if she wears what she thinks will help her feel confident in her own skin again?
You could say any of these could be true as well.
We look at people and pretend we know their whole story, like we could write their life in a split second and just assume it’s fact. People are so much more than they look on the outside. They have goals that they work hard to achieve, dreams that they have had since they were a child, or sadness that they hide from the world.
We can’t know these things, so we make things up for them, just like others do for you. They don’t know the history of your life, but with one glance they may assume more about you than you could fit in one conversation.
What if we knew what was beneath the surface? Would we say a prayer for those who are struggling, and give words of encouragement to the girl who needs to hear them? Perhaps. Perhaps they wouldn’t want you to know.
Maybe the surface is what they have perfected, knowing it may be all you ever see of them. But we will never truly know what is beneath the exterior unless we ask. So, what can we actually do?
We can treat people with kindness, no matter their story. We can recognize that just like the ocean, people can be rough and dark, or that just a small stone can cause a ripple in their glass like appearance. We can hope for happiness and radiate optimism, just like we would want others to do for us.
We can be slow to create our own image, and instead let them paint their own picture of the story they want to tell.
People are so much more than their surface, just like the water is deep.
