OK, this isn’t a blog about books or their covers, but have you ever made a judgment about someone’s behaviour then later realised you were completely wrong?

While I was waiting in line at a coffee shop earlier, a woman drove alongside the queue in a mobility scooter. There was only a narrow space between the line of people and the tables, which she attempted to drive along. She drove over my foot and faintly looked back. She didn’t apologise.

I had a fleeting thought that I expected she would have apologised, but then I just dismissed it and got back to the more important task of selecting which pastry I was going to have with my coffee. For the record, I chose a blueberry muffin, which I suppose isn’t really a pastry.

The lady and I ended up sitting at adjacent tables. She was on the end of a row, so that she could park her scooter. After about half an hour or so, when she had finished her coffee, she got up and back onto her scooter. It wouldn’t start. She tried to turn the key several times before telephoning the place she purchased it from.

An engineer turned up within 5 minutes. The place must have been local. I couldn’t help overhear because they were only a few feet away from me, but it turned out she had only just collected the scooter that morning. This was her very first outing in it, and the first time she had ever driven a mobility scooter. She’d come to the coffee shop for a stress-rest.

I heard that she felt really self-conscious, that she wasn’t at all confident driving it. She certainly wasn’t used to its speed, nor its width, and this combination made it quite stressful when she had to drive it through narrow gaps.

I felt such compassion for the lady. It really hadn’t bothered me at all that she’d driven over my foot. But I had made an assumption, however, that a person doing that should apologise, that an apology is the norm. But says who?

That assumption also assumes a level playing field, that everyone has the same degree of stuff going on in their lives. But we all know that’s not true?

How many times have you felt judged by someone and you only wished they knew what your life was like right then? Or you wished they knew what you had to weigh up in your mind before making a choice or decision that affected them?

We can’t ever know what’s going on in a person’s mind when their behaviour hurts or offends us unless they tell us.

When the lady turned around after driving over my foot, I suspect she wanted to say something, but a mixture of feeling self-conscious, embarrassed, plus afraid that she might drive over someone else’s foot as she navigated along the narrow space between the queue and the tables, made her channel all her energy into just looking forward and keep going in a straight line.

Next time you’re about to judge someone, pause for a second and remind yourself that people have judged you without knowing what was going on in your mind or your life.

After completing his PhD, David worked for 4 years in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer. During this time he also served as an athletics coach and manager of one of the UK’s largest athletics clubs, leading them to three successive UK finals. Upon leaving the pharmaceutical industry, David co-founded the international relief charity Spirit Aid Foundation and served as a director for 2 years.

Now a bestselling author of 6 books published by Hay House, he offers talks and workshops that fuse science, the mind, and spiritual wisdom. David writes a regular blog for the Huffington Post.

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