"Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering." — Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
I used to think I had a personal relationship with everyone's bad mood. Someone snapped at me in the grocery line, and I carried it home like it was mine to fix. A friend went quiet for a few days, and I ran through a mental list of everything I might have done wrong. I was exhausted before I even got to the real problems of my day, because I'd spent all my energy absorbing everyone else's weather.
Here's what took me embarrassingly long to learn: most of what lands on us was never actually about us.
That coworker who's short with you in the meeting? She might be up half the night with a sick kid. The friend who didn't call back? He might be drowning in something he hasn't told anyone yet. Even the person who says something cruel and pointed, aimed right at your chest — that arrow was forged somewhere else, in some old wound of theirs, long before it ever reached you. You just happened to be standing there.
This doesn't mean people's words don't matter, or that we should shrug off real harm. It means we stop making ourselves the main character in everyone else's story. Each of us is walking around inside our own reality— our own fears, our own history, our own tired, half-healed places — and most of what we say and do comes straight out of those experiences, not out of some careful assessment of who you are.
I think about this every time I catch myself in the act of projecting, too. When I'm irritable, it's rarely about the person in front of me. It's about the meeting that ran long, the bill I'm worried about, the thing I said to someone I love and can't take back. If I'm honest, my stuff leaks out onto other people all the time. So why would I assume theirs doesn't leak out onto me?
There's a strange kind of freedom in this. Not indifference — freedom. When you stop scanning every interaction for evidence of your own worth, you get your energy back. You stop rehearsing conversations at 2 a.m. You stop editing yourself into a smaller, safer version just to avoid someone else's bad day.
So here's what I want you to sit with this week: the next time someone's words sting, pause before you let them in all the way. Ask yourself — is this actually about me, or am I just standing in the path of someone else's storm? You don't have to solve their storm. You don't even have to understand it. You just have to remember it isn't proof of anything about you.
You are not required to carry what belongs to someone else. Set it down. Walk on light. That lightness isn't callousness — it's clarity. And clarity, friends, is a kind of grace.
And here is the video to go with the BLOG: https://youtu.be/-TXpnZC29vE; if closed captions come on please un-click the CC button on the YouTube screen-bottom right.
Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle
Rev. Gayle
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