Tragedies happen to everyone, but not everyone knows what tragedy happened to you.
As a society, you almost can't help but to jump to conclusions for any given situation. You see a group of African American teenagers walking down the sidewalk and your brain immediately tells you to walk on the other side of the street. You notice a friend has stopped talking to you, so you assume they are mad at you or don't like you anymore. You see a pregnant teen and quickly decide she's promiscuous and made a stupid decision.
But things aren't so cut and dry.
The group of teenagers? They all have 3.8 GPAs and plan on going to college. That friend? They suffer from depression and constantly have their brain telling them they annoy you every time they text you no matter how many times you reply. That pregnant teen? She had a Roofie put into her drink at a party.
You never know what a person has gone through. Every individual has had to experience some type of struggle that has helped shape them into the person they are today. So why do we all still have the tendency to jump to conclusions? Is it because it's easier than finding out the truth?
You can drive down the road and have no idea that the intersection you just drove through was where someone else's loved one passed away.
It's crazy to think about how tragedies happen every day and only the people affected by it know. Car accidents happen every minute on every road and other people just drive on that pavement without knowing the significance. Without knowing that a life was changed somehow right there on that crosswalk, or in that hospital bed, or on that park bench or in that office building.
If everyone just took a moment, just one single moment, to stop and think about the different reasons why people do what they do, the world would be much better off.
There's always an explanation for people's actions even when you don't think there is. It's our job as human beings to try to figure out that reasoning in order to understand our peers better as well as any stranger we come across on a daily basis.
Jumping to conclusions is a bad habit that has become a norm in our country and has caused a lot of turmoil.
My advice to you is that the next time you are walking down the street, picking a seat in class, or shopping at the grocery store, to take a second to push all of your judgement aside. It'll take a while to rewire your brain to not jump to conclusions, but once you do, you'll find that you will rest easier when you give people the benefit of the doubt.
I leave you with the same sentence I started this with:
Tragedies happen to everyone, but not everyone knows what tragedy happened to you.
