Maya Angelou famously said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Sheesh. That isn’t one of the truest things I have ever heard.

Thinking about this follows a familiar pattern.

First, I think of the ways others have made me feel. They check their cell phones when we eat together. They don’t even pretend to listen, waiting for the first breath so they can get back to talking (sometimes about something totally different, oblivious to the fact that I was ever speaking.) They are late. They use words that are intentionally cutting and/or dismissive. And on and on. A million actions, words, body language, and tones, impossible to misconstrue, can make us feel absolutely unimportant to them.

I get a little angry and frustrated at them. How can someone be so rude? So thoughtless? So self-obsessed? My hands are probably on my hips at this point, indignant at their behavior.

And then… It’s this “And then…” that really bothers me. I do wish that I could stop this pattern right after “indignant at their behavior.” It would make things so much easier. I could just be comfortably right. And I am right, it is rude, thoughtless, self-obsessed, but I am not comfortable because of the “And then…”

This happens when I watch documentaries, too. I can’t believe these people!! Monsters!!!

And then…

And then I realize the million ways I have made others feel. How could I have been so rude? So thoughtless? So self-obsessed? I am a monster, too! In the Bible, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he spends a chapter detailing how awful everyone else is, and then, in the next breath, pulls the rug out from under us and our righteousness and says, “you are exactly like them!”

It’s a familiar pattern that I really can’t stand. I want to be happy pointing at them from the moral high ground.

But of course, there is no moral high ground, it’s all just flat, like the Midwest. And all that’s left is to pay attention to our own actions, words, body language, and tones. To the ways we make others feel. To care for their hearts. To make them feel important to us. (This is infinitely easier once they actually are important to us.) We can look, see, notice, listen, stop. We have to begin to hear Maya Angelou and integrate her words into our lives, but the sad terrible part is that we have to first have an “And then…”