YOU DON'T KNOW THEIR STORY. AND THEY DON'T GET TO WRITE YOURS.

I hate how quickly we decide we know somebody.

Five seconds.

Sometimes that's all it takes.

Five seconds to look at a stranger and decide they're lazy, arrogant, annoying, weird, unsuccessful, or simply not worth our time.

And the worst part?

We rarely even question ourselves.

We see something. We create an explanation. And suddenly that explanation becomes the truth.

The car in front of you is driving too slowly.

You get frustrated. You start complaining. Maybe you honk.

But what if the person behind that steering wheel is an elderly man whose hands don't feel as steady as they once did?

What if he's terrified of making a mistake?

What if all he wants is to get home safely?

You don't know.

And yet you've already decided he's an idiot.

The coworker who never stops talking?

Maybe they go home to an apartment where nobody is waiting. Maybe those annoying conversations at work are the only moments in their day when someone actually listens.

The person you call lazy because they haven't accomplished anything recently?

Maybe getting out of bed has become the most difficult thing they do.

Maybe they've been fighting something in their own mind that you wouldn't survive nearly as gracefully as you imagine.

And the person whose body you decided to turn into a joke?

They might have heard that joke a hundred times.

You forgot it five minutes after saying it.

They might remember it for the rest of their life.

Isn't it terrifying how something that means absolutely nothing to you can become something another person carries for years?

You see the behaviour. You don't see the life behind it.

There's a kid who barely speaks.

Everyone calls him weird.

Nobody knows he spent twenty minutes that morning convincing himself to say hello.

There's a teenager who's always angry.

People say he needs discipline.

Maybe he does.

But maybe he also needs somebody to understand why he's angry.

Maybe he grew up in a house where being heard meant raising his voice.

Maybe nobody ever taught him what safety feels like.

There's a person who shares too much about their life.

You call them dramatic.

Maybe they're simply relieved that somebody is listening.

There's someone who wears long sleeves even when everyone else is complaining about the heat.

You notice.

You make a comment.

You laugh.

But perhaps there's a reason they're not ready to explain.

And perhaps you were never entitled to that explanation in the first place.

There's a person who never talks about their family.

You assume they're private.

Maybe they are.

Or maybe every time someone talks about going home for Christmas, they have to swallow something they don't know how to put into words.

And there's a kid who never invites anyone home.

Not because they don't want friends.

But because they're afraid their friends will see where they live.

The furniture.

The walls.

The things their family cannot afford.

And suddenly the place where they're supposed to feel safest becomes something they're ashamed of.

I want you to think about that.

How many people have we made feel ashamed of things they never chose?

Their bodies.

Their families.

Their financial circumstances.

Their fears.

Their personalities.

The way they speak.

The way they struggle.

And how often have we called our cruelty honesty because admitting it was cruelty would make us uncomfortable?

"I'm just saying what everyone is thinking."

"I'm only joking."

"People are too sensitive nowadays."

No.

Sometimes you're simply being an asshole, and you've found a socially acceptable way to avoid taking responsibility for it.

Not every joke is harmless because you intended it to be funny.

And not every judgment becomes reasonable because someone else agrees with you.

I wonder how many times I've been wrong about someone.

I need to admit something.

It's easy for me to write about kindness.

It's much harder to practice it every single day.

I've judged people.

I've been impatient.

I've misunderstood situations.

I've made assumptions I had absolutely no right to make.

And I'm sure I've hurt people without fully understanding how deeply.

That bothers me.

Because I know what it's like to have people see one part of you and assume they understand everything.

I know what it's like to appear independent while quietly wanting something much simpler.

Someone who calls.

Someone who remembers.

Someone who chooses you without needing something in return.

I've told myself I don't need anybody.

I've told myself I don't care what people think.

And sometimes I've meant it.

But other times?

I would have given anything to know what it feels like to be someone's favourite person.

Not because I'm successful.

Not because I can help them.

Not because I have something useful to offer.

Just because I'm me.

And I wonder how many people I walk past every day are carrying the same feeling.

The person serving my coffee.

The student sitting alone.

The colleague who laughs a little too loudly.

The stranger who keeps checking their phone even though nobody has written to them.

Maybe they're perfectly happy.

Maybe they're not.

The point is that I don't know.

And that should matter.

Because what if we're all walking around hoping somebody will see us as human beings while barely taking the time to see the humanity in each other?

What if everyone is waiting to be understood, and nobody is willing to understand first?

You don't have to fix somebody to be kind to them.

I think we've made kindness unnecessarily complicated.

We imagine it requires grand gestures.

Extraordinary generosity.

Money.

Time.

Some remarkable act of sacrifice.

But sometimes kindness is much smaller.

Sometimes it's not making the joke.

Not interrupting.

Not turning somebody's insecurity into entertainment.

Not asking a question when you can see they're uncomfortable answering it.

Sometimes it's listening to someone tell the same story again because you realize they don't have many people to tell it to.

Sometimes it's remembering something they mentioned weeks ago.

Sometimes it's asking how their day was and staying long enough to hear the answer.

And sometimes it's admitting that you don't understand what somebody is going through, instead of pretending that you do.

You don't need to diagnose everyone.

You don't need to save everyone.

You don't need to know the details of their suffering.

You simply need to remember that the person standing in front of you is living a life just as complicated and meaningful to them as yours is to you.

A life filled with memories you'll never see.

People they've loved.

Things they've lost.

Promises they've made.

Regrets they haven't forgiven themselves for.

And fears they may never say aloud.

Every person you meet has an entire world inside them that you will probably never be invited to see.

Be careful with that world.

You might only visit it for five minutes.

But what you say there can remain long after you've left.

And now I want to talk to the person who's tired of being judged.

Yes.

You.

The one reading this while quietly wondering whether any of these descriptions sound familiar.

Maybe you've spent years trying to become somebody people would approve of.

Changing the way you dress.

The way you speak.

The things you enjoy.

The people you spend time with.

The dreams you're willing to admit you have.

Maybe you've learned to laugh at jokes that hurt you because you didn't want to appear sensitive.

Maybe you've stayed silent because speaking honestly would make somebody uncomfortable.

Maybe you've apologized for things that weren't wrong simply because you were tired of explaining yourself.

And perhaps you've started believing that if you could just become a little more attractive, a little more successful, a little more interesting, a little more normal, people would finally accept you.

Let me ask you something.

How many versions of yourself are you prepared to destroy before you realize that some people were never going to approve of you anyway?

Seriously.

How much more of your life are you willing to sacrifice trying to impress people who barely know you?

People who don't know what you've survived.

People who weren't there when things became difficult.

People who have absolutely no responsibility for the consequences of the decisions they're so comfortable criticizing.

Because everyone has an opinion about the life you're supposed to live.

Study this.

Work there.

Marry this kind of person.

Earn this much.

Don't take that risk.

Don't be so emotional.

Don't be so ambitious.

Don't be so different.

Don't be so much.

And if you spend your life obeying every opinion, eventually you'll become someone you barely recognize.

All that effort to make everybody comfortable.

And somehow you're the only person who isn't.

What a fucking tragedy.

Your life is not a committee meeting.

I want to say something that might sound aggressive.

Fuck the idea that you need everybody's permission to exist as yourself.

You don't.

You never did.

You don't need approval from people who refuse to understand your decisions.

You don't need to make your ambitions smaller because somebody else finds them unreasonable.

You don't need to apologize for caring deeply about something.

You don't need to pretend you're happy with a life you don't want simply because it looks respectable from the outside.

And you certainly don't need to spend the only life you have performing a version of yourself that makes strangers comfortable.

Make your decisions.

Take the risks you've actually thought through.

Love people.

Build things.

Travel.

Change direction.

Make mistakes.

Learn.

Start again.

And when something matters to you, stop treating everybody else's opinion as though it's a vote.

Because they don't have to live with the life you never attempted.

You do.

But understand something.

Living on your own terms does not give you permission to hurt people.

You cannot demand kindness while treating everybody else like shit.

You cannot ask people to understand your suffering while dismissing theirs.

And you cannot call every criticism judgment simply because you dislike hearing it.

Sometimes people challenge you because they care.

Sometimes you're wrong.

Sometimes you owe someone an apology.

Real freedom includes having the courage to acknowledge that.

You have the right to live your own life. You do not have the right to forget that other people are living theirs.

And perhaps that's the balance we've been missing.

Be brave enough to disappoint people.

But don't become proud of hurting them.

One day, you'll wish you'd been a little gentler.

There's something about time that I find incredibly difficult to accept.

We never really know how much of it we have with somebody.

That stranger you were impatient with?

You don't know what kind of day they've had.

That friend you keep meaning to call?

You don't know what they've been trying to tell you.

That person who seemed perfectly fine yesterday?

You don't know what they were hiding behind that smile.

And the people you love?

You keep assuming there will be another opportunity.

Another dinner.

Another conversation.

Another ordinary Tuesday.

Another chance to tell them how much they matter.

But someday, there won't be.

And I wonder whether, when we look back, we'll regret not being more impressive.

Or whether we'll regret the moments when we could have been kind and chose not to be.

The phone call we ignored.

The apology we postponed.

The person we humiliated because everybody else was laughing.

The friend who needed us, and we were too busy to notice.

The people we made feel invisible.

I don't want to become somebody who only learns the value of people after they're gone.

I don't want to spend my life chasing extraordinary things while treating ordinary human beings as though they don't matter.

And I don't want to become so obsessed with protecting myself from the world that I forget how to love the people living in it.

Because I think there's a difference between becoming strong and becoming hard.

Strong enough to make your own decisions.

But not so hard that you stop caring how those decisions affect somebody else.

Strong enough to survive rejection.

But not so hard that you begin rejecting everyone first.

Strong enough to live without approval.

But not so hard that you pretend affection means nothing.

I want to be strong enough to remain gentle in a world that keeps giving me reasons not to be.

Before you go.

If you've made it this far, there's something I want to tell you.

Not as someone who has figured life out.

Not as someone who always makes the right decisions.

Just as another human being trying to understand what the hell we're all doing here.

I hope somebody asks how your day was today.

And I hope they mean it.

I hope someone remembers a small detail about you that you assumed nobody noticed.

I hope you find people around whom you don't have to become more impressive, more entertaining, or less complicated to be loved.

I hope you have somewhere you can take off the version of yourself you show the world and simply exist.

And if you don't have that right now, I hope you don't mistake its absence for evidence that you don't deserve it.

Because loneliness is not proof that you're unlovable.

Being misunderstood is not proof that there's something wrong with you.

And being somebody's second choice, or third, or not being chosen at all, does not determine your worth.

I know how easy it is to say those things.

Believing them is much harder.

But perhaps that's where we begin.

By refusing to let the careless opinions of others become the voice inside our own heads.

By remembering that everyone is carrying something.

By making room for people whose lives we don't understand.

And by allowing ourselves the same kindness we've spent so much time trying to give everybody else.

So tomorrow, when someone drives too slowly, maybe give them a little space.

When someone talks too much, perhaps listen for another minute.

When someone looks different, resist the temptation to make them feel it.

When someone struggles, don't immediately turn their struggle into a character flaw.

And when somebody tries to convince you that your life should look exactly like theirs?

Listen if there's something worth learning.

Then make your own decision.

Because I want you to be kind.

Not weak.

Not silent.

Not obedient.

Kind.

The kind of person who understands that everybody is fighting something.

The kind who doesn't need to make somebody else feel small to feel important.

The kind who has the courage to live differently without becoming cruel toward those who don't.

And the kind who knows that being misunderstood is sometimes the price of living honestly.

One day, all of this will be over.

The arguments.

The judgments.

The things we were embarrassed about.

The people we were desperately trying to impress.

And I hope that when my time comes, I won't have spent my entire life asking whether everyone approved of me.

I hope I'll have loved people.

I hope I'll have listened.

I hope I'll have apologized when I was wrong.

I hope I'll have lived.

And I hope that somewhere along the way, I made another person's life feel a little less lonely.

Because, in the end, perhaps that's what matters most.

Not how many people admired us.

Not how many people agreed with us.

Not how impressive we looked.

But whether the people who crossed our paths felt a little more human because we were there.

You don't know their story.

And they don't get to write yours.

So be gentle with people.

And for God's sake, be brave enough to live your own life.

Samir Seddiqi

11 November 2026