A few days ago, I was waiting in line at the supermarket. I was in a really terrible mood, which is something that isn't common for me, especially on a Saturday morning, but my week had been awful and I wasn't afraid to take it out on anyone who crossed my path. The sun was out and bursting through the window and the store was decently packed, but not so busy that you couldn't navigate your way through the aisles. Either way, my aura was completely awful, and I couldn't think of anything better to do than to get home and go back to bed.
Waiting in line, the woman behind me began to talk. She commented on the weather and she began to attempt to have a discussion about her afternoon. My head pounded with every word that came out of her mouth. She talked as the cashier scanned my things, and she talked as he put them in bags, and she talked and talked and talked. Meanwhile, I ignored mostly everything she said, despite a few "mhm's" and "Oh's." When I grabbed my grocery bags, I proceeded to walk directly out the door, in the midst of her asking for my help with carrying her bags to her car. The door closed behind me and I returned home, still in an awful mood.
After I was home I realized that this stranger, this woman, had an idea of me in her head. Although she only knew me for maybe 10 minutes, she already had formed a solid opinion of me -- that I existed as a rude human who she happened to come across on a Saturday morning. I began to wonder how many other versions of me existed in this world. My mother has an idea of me in her head, which I'm sure differs from my sister's view, and my friends' views and the views of people I pass every day.
This thought began to frustrate me, because none of these versions could possibly be completely accurate, as the only person who truly knows me, is me. Every single person that we encounter, has a different idea of who we are. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of versions of each and every one of us that we aren't even aware exists, and for a moment, I found it extremely unsettling that I allowed myself to cause a stranger in a grocery store to believe I am a rude person. Every single person on this planet has a different view of who you are in their mind, and that terrifies me, because none of them are completely accurate. I don't know how many versions of myself there are, but I know that I want most of them to be looked at as a decent human being. I believe that our encounters with people are too short to not be kind to everyone. I know there are a million ideas of who I am, roaming around inside of the minds of people I've never even spoken to, but I want to make sure that they're positive. You never know who might create the next version of you.
