Intro:
The New Year had me thinking a lot about goals, values, ambitions, motivations, life, and how excited I was to wear my new fuzzy socks. With all the talk of “look how far you’ve come in a year” and “can you believe that was only 1 year ago” I found myself even more reflective and nearly bubbling over with blog ideas – two of which involved writing about goals and values.
At my old job, we had a list of working norms – kind of like guiding values – and each day at our morning huddle, we would say what working norm we were focusing on that day. I loved that idea. I mean, obviously, in theory, you were living into every positive attribute every day you walked into the office, but how nice it was to really put your heart and soul behind one guiding value each week.
For this reason, I’ve decided to dedicate a new series of “Res” posts to my own kind of working norms – my own mini-resolutions. You don’t have to buy into any of these. You don’t have to make your own. But maybe at some point, it’ll make you think about what it would look like to radically change your life one week at a time.
Res 45: See People for Everything They Are
At least once a week, I find myself humming a song from the old animated series, The Land Before Time.
In case you can’t stand the sound of baby dinosaurs singing, allow me to give a quick summary of the opening line that has stuck with me through all these years.
“Everybody has a lot of good inside of them and everybody has a little bad.”
Those opening lines are sung by Ducky to comfort her friend Petrie. Basically, Ducky was kidnapped and chased by Petrie’s “bad” uncle and his henchmen. When all the dinosaur friends reunite, Petrie is very upset that his uncle is mean. Ducky, who is the one who has been hurt the most by Petrie’s uncle and has the most reason to be upset, begins to comfort Petrie by telling him that everybody is good and bad.
I remember watching that as a little girl and being utterly confused. Usually childhood cartoons are pretty black and white. You know who the good guy is and you know who the bad guy is. You’re never given any reason to doubt whether the bad guy could actually be good or whether the good guy has flaws of their own.
I remember thinking that Ducky has all the reason in the world to hate Petrie’s uncle but she didn’t. And not only did she not hate Petrie’s uncle, but she – in a way – defends him. I think about this song a lot more than a 23-year-old should but upon deciding to write about it, I really sat down and listened to the song.
At one point, Littlefoot and Cera announce that “sometimes we’re wrong // sometimes we’re right // but mostly we’re somewhere in between.”
The song ends with the proclamation that everybody has good inside and causes me to believe that nothing is as black and white as the average childhood cartoon would make you think.
Resolution #45: See People for Everything They Are
I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to be defined by my worst 15 minutes. That said, I also don’t want to be seen as perfect by any stretch. While I try to be good person, I know there are many times where I fall short. I’m not as loving or as forgiving or as patient as I should be.
See it in yourself and then have the grace to see it in others. Even that person that drives you crazy has a little good inside them. Even that person that you idolize has faults. And at the end of the day, we’re all somewhere in between.
Love always,
Liz