When people are scared, hurt, or confused it can be natural for them to lash out. Do you know where the term “scapegoat” comes from? It’s a religious tradition; people would “put their sins into” a goat, and then release that goat, chasing it away from their village. The idea was that the goat took with it the sins – and the blame.

That can seem absurd by modern standards, until you realize that people do that all the time. If someone is scared or hurt or confused, all you have to do is get close enough and the scared/hurt/confused person can lash out and heap a bunch of blame on you while simultaneously chasing you away. This doesn’t do much to solve their problems, but it does satisfy some inner desire to be free of a sense of ill will. If that’s all it did, it would actually be okay! There’s nothing wrong with a ritual to make us feel better – except if it happens to you, it can make you feel… scared, hurt or confused!

You see, when people did this to a goat, it didn’t matter. From the goat’s perspective, a bunch of humans said a bunch of words and then let it go. Cool! No sweat off the goat’s back, right? If anything, great for the lucky goat. It certainly didn’t create any cycles of harmful behavior. But when a human becomes a scapegoat, that human is now experiencing the very conditions that create the need for a new one.

Another unfortunate aspect of this is that “proximity” to a person experiencing the negative emotions is more likely if it’s someone you care about, someone you interact with frequently. So it’s not uncommon for colleagues, friends, family members, or other close people to lash out in exactly this way.

And you don’t want to blame them! After all, you care about them. And you understand everything they’re experiencing is natural. Fear and pain and confusion are unpleasant stimuli. Lashing out in this way is so natural that we have a whole word for it, going back to parables in the Bible. This isn’t healthy, but it’s perfectly understandable.

So you don’t want to continue the cycle by passing it on to another, and you don’t want to be mad at the people who passed it onto you. So what do you do?

Let people be hurt, scared or confused. Let them come to you. Be understanding; they’re only human, just like you. Help them find a solution if they really want one, let them vent if they don’t. If it becomes necessary, walk away – some people may not give you any other option. But above all else, love your neighbor. Because no one else can carry your pain but you – not even goats. But lots of people can carry your love with you, if you share it.

When presented with a frustrating failure or setback, often your well-meaning loved ones will tell you that no one else’s opinion matters, and the only one who needs to be satisfied is you.

This isn’t wrong, on the face of it. But oh, the excuses it makes!

First, it’s simply not true that no one else’s opinion matters. Your self-respect is paramount, and only your own self-respect is an end in itself. But other people’s opinion does matter, insofar as other people choosing to interact with you is how you live your life.

But even more importantly – people often use the phrase “the only person whose opinion matters is yours” to mean something akin to “everything is fine as it is.”

If self-respect is the default, then it’s meaningless.

Just like the respect of others, you need to earn your own respect. You need to work for it. Now, you should of course treat everyone – including yourself – with respect. An unfortunate thing about that word is it sort of has two meanings in our modern society. It can mean “basic dignity” and it can also mean “elevated esteem.” Everyone deserves basic dignity, but of course tautologically everyone can’t deserve elevated esteem. In this post, I’m referring to the second definition – as far as the first goes, be nice to everyone, including yourself.

But if you want to truly esteem yourself, you have to do things worth esteeming. You get to decide what those things are, but it’s a cop-out to just declare that they’re just all the things you’re already doing. If I stopped writing, stopped working, stopped taking care of my children, stopped exercising – I might still be worthy of basic humanity, but I certainly couldn’t say I respected myself. And if I did, then the respect I have for myself now is meaningless.

Self-respect is inexorably tied to self-improvement. You are the only person you truly need to impress – but you should also be the hardest. Loving someone does not mean accepting every one of their flaws without reaction. I love my children, but I would be expressing that love poorly if I didn’t work hard to give them the tools to improve themselves. You should love yourself – but you should express that love by motivating yourself to be the best expression of “you” that you can be.

In either direction, we can over-anticipate our arrival at a destination. We can expect something amazing or terrible, and it may overshadow what actually happens. It can then be difficult to notice – or accept – that we have, in fact, arrived.

My son was once going in for a booster shot. I had explained to him what was going to happen, and that it may be a little uncomfortable. He worked himself up into a bit of a meltdown – but the shot itself barely bothered him. In fact, the shot was so easy compared to what he expected, that even on the drive home he was still worried – he couldn’t accept that the bad thing had already passed, because it was so much less severe than he had anticipated.

We experience this in reverse sometimes, too. We expect to feel a certain way upon reaching some milestone, and if we don’t then we think we must not have reached it at all. You think being “successful” in your career will make you happy, but it doesn’t – so instead of re-evaluating the goal, you just think “I must not be successful yet.” Because if you were, you’d feel happy, right?

What a cycle that creates!

I try very hard not to set “emotion goals” or even emotional predictions. I try hard not to let myself say, “when X happens, I’m going to feel very good/bad.” That can create some cognitive dissonance that I don’t want to deal with. Keep your goals grounded in real results, and your predictions centered around the physical world. Then, emotionally, say – “whatever happens, I will respond maturely; for I am in command.” Mark the arrival, and see it for what it is.

I was once in a very small airport in Indiana, the kind that gets about two flights a day. I was on one of those flights, so I arrived and looked for the check-in for my airline. I noticed that while the airport was virtually deserted that day, it was at least designed to accommodate a much larger crowd, should such a need ever arise. One of the design features was that in front of each check-in desk was a long winding line painted on the floor, winding back over itself until eventually it reached a small free-standing sign that said ‘Enter Here.’

You can imagine the purpose of such a thing, when there’s a large crowd. It would direct the queue of people into some order, allowing them to file towards the desk in a structured fashion. From the looks of the place it didn’t seem like it was frequently used.

When I came in, one other person entered the cavernous lobby with me, headed for a different airline. And I watched with dawning horror as she first went to the ‘Enter Here’ sign, and then walked the entire path of the line. Carrying a suitcase! It must have been something like eight times the distance than just walking in a straight line to the desk.

I looked towards the desk for my airline, and there was a similar line painted on the floor. But, since I was the only other person in the lobby and also not completely insane, I just walked up to the desk. It took about ten seconds. I think by the time I was done checking in the other lady had finally made it to her desk.

There are lots and lots of painted lines in the world. There are surprisingly few walls. Sometimes we think there are a lot of walls, but that’s just because we’re mistaking the painted lines for impenetrable barriers. They’re not.

I’ve seen this sentiment paraphrased in one way or another many times, in many different places. The gist is this:

“The cost of success is tons of hours of work, no social life, sacrificing your health & sleep, skipping family events, and putting all your money back into your work – if you’re not willing to do that, you won’t succeed.”

I mean… I can imagine something being worth that. If I truly believed that doing all that would cure cancer, I’d be morally obligated to do it. But for just “personal success?” I mean – if you don’t have any of those other things, what does “success” even mean?

Some people naturally have a high work ethic, and I’m a big supporter of hustle. But you also have to define success, not just seek the word.

Sometimes, when I’m driving, I’ll make a mistake and do something that upsets another driver. Or maybe it wasn’t even a mistake, just a necessary tactical decision due to some unusual but emergent circumstances. In any case, I can see that another driver is upset, and what I would love to do is find a way to contact them, apologize, and explain my reasons for doing what I did.

Obviously that’s not going to happen, so I started doing something else a few years ago, instead. Every time this occurred (and it wasn’t often – I’m a safe and considerate driver, by and large), I mentally noted what my behavior must have looked like to an outside observer, stripped of internal context. And then I filed that impression, and whenever another driver upset me by doing the same thing, I instantly forgave them. I just assumed that their reasons for doing whatever they did exactly mirrored mine in that one instance from long ago. “Sure, it looks like they just were inconsiderate and cut me off to make that exit, but maybe they also have a snapping turtle loose in the back seat and it’s trying to get at grandma’s birthday cake which you’ve been instructed to deliver to the nursing home that closes in ten minutes! Good luck, brother!”

(That one never actually happened, but you get what I’m saying.)

What quickly happened after I started doing this was that I realized no one had the ability to upset me on the road any more. Everything was expected, understandable, forgivable.

This extends way beyond road etiquette. Every mistake might be unique, but they definitely fall into broad categories that you’ve contributed to yourself, more than once. This humility of understanding can lead you to a far more peaceful inner life – I highly recommend it.

If you ask a question on a platform like Twitter, you might get an answer. If you really want an answer the thing to do is confidently state the wrong thing – people will swarm out of the woodwork to correct you, and you’ll have your answer faster.

People absolutely love the chance to be right, and you can use that to your advantage!

Here’s another way – if you want the chance to prove something, make an outrageous statement. Say something that seems untrue, but that you can back up. Make your boldest claim, and people will scramble to call you out. If you claim is one that can only be disproven by you failing, then they’ll have to give you the chance in order to prove themselves right.

And of course, you’ll prove them wrong.

Everyone is unique, but from our perspective, it’s everyone else that’s unique. We’re “normal” – the standard from which everyone else deviates.

That’s a natural thought pattern, but it can often lead to you undervaluing your unique skills or contributions. (Think about how no one thinks they have an accent – only other people have accents!) But no matter what you’re good at, you’re good at it for a unique reason. You have your own approach and methodology.

Identifying it is the tough part. You don’t think you have an accent, even though you do – and you don’t think you have a unique methodology for your skill set, either. You think you do things the “normal” way. Self-awareness is a virtue – step back and examine what you do. Talk to others and see how you differ.

And then strike the word “despite” from your vocabulary. Too often when someone does identify a uniqueness in their work, they say, “I’m good at X, despite the fact that I do it in this unusual way.”

No way! It’s because you do it that way. That’s your value-add! There is no normal way of doing things. There are statistical averages and groupings and so on, but the reality is that every single person has a spin.

Identify yours, and it becomes that much easier to demonstrate it and present it. Your differences are why you’re awesome.

My two youngest children both started pre-school today. Because of the conditions of the last year, the older of the two was delayed in starting by a year, and the school wants to keep general exposure to a reasonable minimum. Those things combined mean that they’re starting at the same time, and are in the same class. So the dynamic duo gets to have this adventure together, a fact which pleases me to no end.

When you’re big, it takes a lot to have a big adventure. But when you’re small, they’re all big adventures.