A Sweeter World

A few years ago, my youngest child and I were a having one of those profound conversations that happen every so often. She was 3 and we were alone in the car. We were discussing candy. She was for and I was against.
She has always been a deep thinker and I listened as she reasoned out why candy was good for us. I knew that I was losing the argument when she decided that God had made candy to help us be sweet. What could I say? From her perspective, it did!
What really got to me was what she did after coming to that conclusion. She began listing the people in her life that needed candy. Her idea was for us to go to the store, buy a giant bag of M&M’s and pass them out. Her list was VERY interesting. Some names were no brainers, others I had to ask about. Her answers were revealing. I realized that her quick, intuitive, 3 yr. old mind had picked up on many things I had not.
I also learned that to her “grumpy” or “not sweet” included those who had been rude, short, sad, or otherwise hurting emotionally. She was picking up on external clues to an internal conflict. She was not hurt by any of these reactions. It didn’t occur to her to take their moods personally. She read them as hurting and needing to be sweetened. That’s all.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. What would the world be like if we ALL stopped taking things personally? What if we stopped worrying about what someone else was doing and just paid attention to our own actions? What if we took the time to see the hurting all around us? Think about it!
That person who just cut you off on the highway might not be trying to piss you off- MAYBE, he just didn’t see you. The grocery clerk who pressed the wrong key and froze the cash register isn’t trying to make you late for work-MAYBE she made a mistake. The person who fired you wasn’t trying to ruin your life- MAYBE he didn’t have a choice. The list is endless.
And even if they did mean it personally, why bother to waste precious emotional energy on them anyway? Just give them a bag of M&M’s and tell them to have a nice day. Yeah, I agree with my daughter. Let’s make the world a sweeter place to be one M&M at a time.
That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?