Everyone Really Is Doing Their Best

An irritating, but enduring, reality

Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash

I’ve been exposed to an oddly diverse array of people in my life.

I’ve eaten a seven-course dinner with Italian aristocrats and Goldman Sachs executives. I’ve eaten dumpster pizza with gutter punks and rough sleepers. I’ve slept in the back of a truck after being picked up hitchhiking by Rainbow Family, in a ditch by the side of a highway, in a tent at a pipeline blockade, in a van in a Walmart parking lot, in a five-star hotel, in a mansion in California, in a lake house in Maine, in the arms of lovers and strangers and friends. I’ve slept with ex-cops and ex-cons, soldiers and social justice warriors, men and women and everything in between. I’ve loved for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, been up, been down, been lost and found again and made every manner of friends and enemies along the way.

I have a strange vantage point, having moved back and forth between wildly different worlds as long as I can remember. I’m not saying this gives me an absolute insight into people, or into anything at all. All I know is that it’s given me the chance to observe patterns, and notice which ones remain consistent even when everything else changes.

There is one pattern in people I can say with conviction always remains true, absolutely everywhere, and…