Kelly Corrigan, an author I love and someone I’ve mentioned before, has been doing weekly Instagram Live videos called “BYOB” since the stay-at-home orders started. This week, she talked about both personal and global struggles that we all face, as she struggled with the experience of having someone close to her try to take his own life while also trying to understand and stay present to the unrest around us surrounding racial injustice. One thing she talked about this week was her suggestion that we have too strong a need to tell ourselves a story that explains things around us so that we can comfort ourselves with conclusions.

“Ascribing motive to behavior totally forecloses discovery,” she says. We make assumptions all the time about why people do the things they do. The kid who cuts me off in traffic is obviously not paying enough attention and is out for a thrill. The woman at work who disagrees with my suggestion must be competing for the boss’s attention. That politician is clearly just grandstanding with his speeches and statements – he just likes to look good.

The truth is, if we haven’t asked, we don’t really know why any of those things occurred. And when we convince ourselves we do know, we cut off the possibility of learning more and deepening our connections with others. Disconnection, crossed wires, and misunderstanding make it so much harder for us to make progress in both our relationships and our communities.

I worked with a leadership coach once who would often remind me to ask myself “What do I know to be true about this situation?” As in, what can I say I know with certainty? I love this question and need to remind myself to ask it more often. Usually, the answer is “not very much”.

I’m not doing this justice. Her video has a number of really beautiful insights, a thought-provoking question about what you might most need as a human in the world right now, and a wonderful poem that she wrote to tie it all together. I recommend you just watch it (it’s 15 minutes, and I think it’s worth it):

Kelly Corrigan – BYOB – 6/10/2020