Episode 59: It’s Your World, I Just Live in It

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I have this saying: “It’s your world, I just live in it.” I usually pull it out when someone is giving off a very particular kind of energy. Their schedule is suddenly the schedule, whatever they need becomes everybody else’s problem, and the rest of us are apparently here to adjust accordingly. I say it jokingly. Mostly.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is for any of us to move through the world that way without realizing we’re doing it. Not because we’re selfish or don’t care about other people. Sometimes we’re so caught up in our own lives that we forget to look around. There’s a big difference between being the main character in your own life and bringing main character energy to everybody else’s.

The problem isn’t being the main character in your own life. The problem starts when you forget everybody else is the main character in theirs.

We’re Really Good at Noticing Friction

Think about the last time someone cut you off in traffic. There’s a decent chance you remember them. Now try to remember all the people who let you merge that same week without making a big deal about it. Those interactions disappear almost immediately because nothing went wrong.

We do the same thing everywhere. We notice the person blocking the grocery aisle, the person who stops directly inside a doorway, or the person at the checkout who seems completely unaware that a line is forming behind them. Meanwhile, we walk past dozens of people who move over, wait their turn, hold the door, or simply manage to share the space with us without incident.

That makes me wonder if we notice selfishness so quickly because cooperation is what we expected in the first place. Think about how much of our daily lives depends on that quiet cooperation. A bunch of strangers walk into a grocery store without discussing the rules first, and somehow we mostly figure out how to move around one another. We do the same thing on roads, at work, in neighborhoods, and pretty much everywhere else humans have decided to gather.

There’s a little harmony in that, and a whole lot of humanity.

So much of community is ordinary enough that we don’t even call it community.

I Miss People Noticing Each Other

At the same time, some of that basic awareness of each other feels like it’s slipping a little. I’m not interested in pretending people were universally kinder twenty years ago, because I’m pretty sure human beings have always been capable of being wonderful, irritating, generous, oblivious, and everything in between.

We are distracted, though. So much of our attention lives on the screens in our hands. We can be standing beside someone while talking to a friend hundreds of miles away, reading about something happening somewhere else, thinking about what we need to do next, and barely noticing who’s right in front of us. It makes sense that we miss each other sometimes.

Still, I miss people noticing each other.

There’s something about someone holding a door because they saw you coming. It isn’t a grand act of kindness, and nobody is going home to tell their family about the incredible stranger who held the door at the bank. It takes five seconds. But underneath that tiny gesture is a simple acknowledgment: I saw you.

When I pay attention, I realize those moments haven’t disappeared. They happen all the time. They’re simply quieter than the moments when someone makes our lives harder, which might be exactly why they’re so easy to miss.

The Roles We Give Each Other

We do something else with people, especially the ones we know well. We give them roles. There’s the person we call when we need to unload, the friend who always listens, the coworker who figures things out, or the family member who never seems to need anything. Those roles aren’t necessarily bad. They help us understand our relationships and know how we fit into each other’s lives.

The problem comes when the role becomes the whole person. Knowing someone really well can make us a little lazy about continuing to know them. People change. What they need changes. What they’re carrying changes. Meanwhile, the version of them we keep in our heads can stay exactly the same.

I’ve caught myself doing a version of this in conversations too. Someone starts telling me something that happened to them, and my brain immediately searches for something similar that happened to me. Usually it comes from a good place. Sharing our own experiences is one of the ways we connect, and hearing “me too” can make us feel less alone. But there’s a difference between using my experience to come closer to yours and using your story as the doorway back into mine.

I’ve been halfway through telling someone my version before realizing I never finished listening to theirs. So I’ve been trying something ridiculously simple.

Ask one more question.

Before I tell you about me, let me learn one more thing about you. What happened next? How are you doing with it? It doesn’t have to turn into some huge emotional conversation. The extra question simply says that I’m still here and still interested. You haven’t become background scenery while I wait for my turn to talk.

In that way, holding a door and asking one more question aren’t all that different. Both are tiny acknowledgments of another person’s existence. Both say, I noticed you were there.

Making Room Doesn’t Mean Disappearing

There’s another side to this, because taking up too much space isn’t everybody’s problem. Some people have gotten incredibly good at making room for everyone else. They listen, adjust, go along, and become the person everyone assumes will be fine. Making room for someone can be one of the most generous things we do, especially when a person we care about needs the moment to be theirs.

But living permanently in the supporting cast is different. If you’re always the one saying, “Whatever you guys want,” always insisting you’re fine because someone else already has enough going on, or always getting uncomfortable when the attention turns toward you, it might be worth asking whether you’ve quietly decided you require less room.

You don’t.

Taking up your space and taking over everybody else’s are two completely different things.

There are moments when someone else needs the scene, and there are moments when you do. The best relationships in my life can move between those places without keeping score. I can show up for you without disappearing, and you can need me without every moment becoming about what you need. Nobody has to live permanently in the audience; we make room for each other.

We Know the Scene. We Don’t Know the Script.

One of the hardest parts of sharing a world with other humans is that we see what people do, but we rarely get all the information behind it. If I’m short with someone, I know I barely slept. I know what happened that morning, what I’m worried about, and what I’m trying to get done. I get all of my context.

The other person only gets my behavior.

Of course, when the roles are reversed, I only get theirs. Someone is rude, distant, distracted, late, or impatient, and my brain is perfectly capable of filling in everything I don’t know. We see the behavior and start writing the rest of the story ourselves.

We know the scene. We don’t know the script.

That doesn’t mean context excuses everything. Someone can have a terrible day and still be responsible for how they treat people. It simply means there’s a difference between what somebody did and who they are, and I’d like to leave a little more room between those two things before deciding I know the whole story.

Somebody Comes After Me

There’s a ridiculously ordinary thing that captures almost everything I’ve been thinking about: returning a shopping cart. Nobody applauds you for it. There’s no prize, and half the time nobody even sees you do it. You walk the extra twenty or thirty feet, put it where it belongs, and get in your car.

Why?

Because somebody comes after you.

Another person will want that parking space. Someone else will walk through that area. Your part in that particular moment is over, but the space continues to exist after you leave it.

Somebody comes after me.

That’s such a small thought, but it reaches far beyond a shopping cart.I don’t have to know everyone’s story or accommodate every person I encounter. What matters is remembering they’re here. And I’m here too.

That matters because harmony doesn’t mean everybody agreeing, wanting the same things, or making themselves smaller to keep everyone else comfortable. It’s messy people living completely separate lives, bumping into each other and figuring out how to share the space. Sometimes we need to move over. Sometimes we need someone else to move over for us. Every once in a while, we get it right.

I want more of that. Not some giant movement or complicated set of rules about how everyone should behave. Just more awareness of the people sharing this place with us.

Just notice.

That basic awareness says, I know I’m living my life over here, but I see you living yours too.

And maybe that’s why my sarcastic little phrase doesn’t sit quite the same anymore. “It’s your world, I just live in it.”

No. That’s exactly what I don’t want.

I don’t want your world over there and mine over here, with all of us trying not to get in each other’s way. We’re supposed to affect each other. We’re supposed to connect, help, listen, make room, laugh together, and occasionally annoy the living daylights out of each other.

That’s being human.

It isn’t your world. It isn’t mine.

It’s ours.

We should start acting like it.

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