So, someone in my life is being terribly mean to me. This might sound like I’m a child on a playground, but that doesn’t make it less true. Anytime I speak or ask any sort of question, he/she is condescending & disrespectful, as if I am the dumbest neanderthal that has ever walked the earth. This is not awesome. It also has very little to do with me.

Last week I watched a limited series on Peacock called The Resort. Cristin Milioti stars as Emma, 1/2 of a married couple on a vacation where they end up getting caught up in a weirdly supernatural mystery. She’s also a nightmare, distant, short & nasty to her husband & everyone else. Ms Milioti is a fantastic, magnetic actor (one of the best going, and if you don’t believe me, watch The Penguin series, especially episode 4), but wildly unlikeable as Emma. This can be an obstacle, when the lead actor is so unsympathetic to the audience, but it can also be the catalyst to our own transformation.

You see, later in the show, we begin to learn that she has lost a newborn child and made an impossible decision that left her broken and miserable. This brokenness informs every relationship in her life, isolates, and creates this aggressively aloof person that we see.

I very much like the Marvel & Star Wars universes moving into series television. It gives us time to learn more, to add depth & nuance, leading us to connect on new levels with these characters. Instead of just 1 primary thread, they are able to slowly expand and show more of the full scope of their complicated humanity. (Andor is probably the best example.)

Emma has built walls that make her as unknowable as she is unlikeable. This is not uncommon in our world, and it’s usually here that our shared story ends. We don’t get to see the why. We don’t get the privilege of backstory. It’s up to us if we have the grace to give them mercy, even if only in our heads & hearts.

This person who is mean to me, he/she is clearly lashing out at the closest safe thing. Why? Who knows? It’s obviously based in fear and insecurity. I know this, and so do you. Bullies are never the most self-assured people in the room, and the meanest are never the happiest. Mostly they’re the opposite. But I don’t know, he/she also doesn’t (can’t?) communicate this terror, this inadequacy, this desperate striving to prove his/her worth. If he/she could, we could assure him/her that he/she is already much, much more than enough.

But nobody likes to be a punching bag for someone’s identity work. It makes me angry, and I want to fight. I want to lash back.

But Emma was just so sad that it made her awful. The people that were sharp with her wouldn’t see the broken pieces she was trying to hide behind miles of thick, thick skin. I wonder if we will. I wonder if I have the courage to extend unconditional kindness, caring for his/her currently jagged edges.

Mean people are never born in a vacuum, everyone has a story. The only question is IF we can give them a break and keep loving despite…well, despite their humanity. We’re all awful & mean sometimes, and this is because we’re all broken in ways we might not acknowledge or understand. Our lives aren’t tv, but what tv certainly teaches us is to reserve our judgment, at least for now, probably forever.