Are you angry?
Namita Ambani
5/10/20252 min read
Divyesh was upset. Another child had pushed him down at the park. He didn't even know the boy. Out of nowhere, he was shoved to the ground.
Samaira was angry. She was driving her father's car when a middle-aged man scraped her fender...and drove away without even stopping to apologise.
Both Divyesh and Samaira had been wronged through no fault of their own. They came home frustrated, replaying the incidents over and over again. It wasn't fair. And they wanted someone to be held accountable.
Their parents said, "Forget it." "Let it go."
But irritation rarely disappears just because we're told to move on. It lingers. It grows.
Divyesh decided that the next time, he'd push the other child back. Samaira decided that perhaps apologies weren't all that important after all.
Let's zoom in.
The child who pushed Divyesh was a child with special needs. He didn't understand why he had pushed. He didn't understand why everyone was upset. His parents apologised immediately. He simply couldn't grasp what had happened.
The man who damaged Samaira's car was rushing to the hospital. His wife had just been admitted after collapsing. He wanted to stop. He wanted to apologise. But in that moment... getting to her felt more urgent than anything else.
In a world of billions of people... how often do we assume we know someone else's story? Sometimes, we don't even know what's happening in the lives of the people closest to us. Yet we become experts at writing stories about strangers.
"How inconsiderate." "What a terrible person." "Some people have no manners."
Most of the time... we never stop to ask, "What might I not know?"
Perhaps the colleague who seemed impatient was carrying unbearable pressure. Perhaps the friend who became distant was fighting a silent battle. Perhaps the stranger who appeared rude had just received devastating news. We'll never know. And that's precisely the point.
Behaviour is visible. Stories rarely are.
The easiest thing in the world is to judge what we can see. The harder—and often kinder—choice is to remain curious about what we cannot. Because compassion doesn't begin when people behave perfectly.
It begins when we remember that every person is carrying something we cannot see.
Reflection
Think about someone who frustrated you recently.
Before replaying what they did...pause.
Ask yourself:
What might I not know?
If you knew their whole story...Would your response be different?
And one final question...
How often have I mistaken someone's behavior for their character?