People, all of them, have stories and secrets we’ll never know, so we project our best guess. We fill in the blanks of their lives. We write a quick story and believe it but we don’t give them a chance to read it, critique it, help us see that we create assumptions instead of connection when we choose our answer and refuse to ask questions.

Emotions are just hints for us to go within, to dive deeper, to see what’s there. They manifest in different ways. Sometimes hurt is rude and sometimes pain is mad. And, sometimes, in a small yard in a big city, heartbreak looks mean.

We are very quick to judge others, based on how they look and behave on the outside, but seldom do we care to know what their story might be. Every person has a story, and trying to know it before judging them and dismissing them can help us be better people.