We Are the World

We are with others in the world the way we are in the world. The way we move through life becomes the lens through which we understand everyone else, often without noticing it.

If my first instinct is to lie to avoid discomfort, or to lie at all, then that is how I understand the world. Not just how I behave, but how I assume others behave. It wouldn’t make sense for me to expect honesty from people if dishonesty is my own default. So I don’t. I move through life guarded, suspicious, reading between lines that may not even exist.

But if my instinct is to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable, then I tend to meet people from that same place. I assume honesty. I assume intention. And when someone lies, it actually surprises me, not because I’m naïve, but because it contradicts how I experience myself in the world.

The same is true with trust. If I am someone who says what I mean and means what I say, then trust feels natural to me. I don’t have to work at it. It’s simply how reality makes sense. But if I know I am unreliable, inconsistent, or self serving, then the world becomes unreliable, inconsistent, and self serving too. Everyone becomes suspect.

We don’t experience the world as it is. We experience it as we are.

So often, what we call “being realistic” is actually just being reflective. We project our own way of being outward and call it truth. But it’s not truth. It’s familiarity.

The way we are with others is rarely about them. It is almost always a mirror of how we live inside ourselves.