Mommy, what would make you smile?

What traveling looks like when you assume everyone is doing the best they can

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Traveling is not normally an opportunity to contemplate the goodness of humanity for me. Most often, it’s an exercise in the exact opposite. Is there anything more likely to make you despise all your fellow humans than being barked at by TSA employees in line at security, especially when they’re giving you the exact opposite instructions you got at the previous airport (Yes, take your laptop out! No, you don’t have to take your laptop out! Consistency, people! Consistency!)?

But not long before this trip, I listened to a Brené Brown podcast in which she asked herself (and then a bunch of other people) this fundamental question—do you believe that most of the time people are doing the best they can?

Brené’s initial answer was, “Hell, no!” People who answer the question this way are equally emphatic. They know with a deep and resolute certainty that people are not doing the best they can most of the time. Instead, they’re slacking off. Or lazy. Intentionally cruel. Indifferent. Their rudeness or meanness are intentional. To put it more simply, this would be the People Suck school of thought.

When other people are asked this question—are people doing the best they can most of the time—they hesitate. They fudge. They might sigh and stare up at the ceiling. Frown deeply. They take time to think about it. They’re not at all sure about their answer, but in the end, they say that, yes, they think, maybe, it’s just possible that people are doing the best they can most of the time.

Of course, when I heard this podcast, I immediately asked myself which camp I was in. I’m not certain about much of anything, so I didn’t have Brené Brown’s response. I like to try to give myself the benefit of the doubt when I fuck up and act in ways that are hurtful or negligent. I was doing the best I could in that moment, I tell myself, even if I know I can do better.¹ So, yes, isn’t that what everyone else is doing, too?

When Brené Brown asked her husband this question, he paused for a long time before saying, he’s not sure if people are doing the best they can, but he chooses to believe it because that’s the world he wants to live in. To believe in the good intentions of others is an act of faith. Of course it is.

I find it harder and easier to apply this idea depending on who I’m interacting with. I totally believe my students are doing the best they can most of the time. Sometimes it’s harder to believe about my husband when we’re having an argument. The TSA agent? Are you kidding me? Is spending all day yelling at people to take off their shoes the best you can do?

But this trip, I decided to give it a try. Just assume that everyone is doing the best they can. Whisper it like a mantra in my head when I find out that this airline charges you $25 to check-in at the airport. Okay, they’re doing the best they can. Not this woman’s fault.

Easy to apply to the mother with the small baby in the seat in front of me on the airplane. Harder when I discover I’m going to have to rent a Tesla because that’s all they have left, even though I reserved a compact car (as Seinfeld would say, what does ‘reserve’ mean, then?).

Still, I kept at it and it felt better. It made traveling a little less stressful. I was doing the best I could in the moment. So was everyone else.

With that thought in my head, the utter benevolence and cooperation of travel began to be revealed. Think about it for a moment. The orderliness of people lining up over and over again—to check-in, to board the train to the terminal, to get their Starbucks. The way an older man on the plane reminded a young man not to forget his carry-on bag (the bag contained his adorable little dog, so no chance he was forgetting that, but still).

There are so many instructions to follow when you’re traveling. So many rules, some of them so nonsensical and, frankly, humiliating. Put your feet on these heel marks and then hold your hands up like you’re under arrest. Yes, okay, I’ll do that. Sure.

Yes, people are often grumpy and in a rush and stressed out. But, still, the couple in their Bengals gear agree to watch my bag while I go to the bathroom. So does the guy in the seat across from me for a woman he doesn’t know. When, on the flight down, the attendant needs five people to move to the front of the plane to balance out the weight, five people volunteer.

The moments look small at first, but what else is there in our life but small moments. Letting the person go ahead of you through the security line. Leaning over in my seat so the person walking down the narrow aisle of the airplane doesn’t bump into me. Or the people I bumped into myself not complaining.

Random deer in the snow pic for your viewing pleasure

Traveling is such a cooperative effort. A marvel of trusting that my bag will come back to me and the runway will have been cleared of snow and that the pilot will get me home. When you assume we’re all in it together, doing our very best, it becomes a thing of beauty.

And in that beauty, amazing moments emerge, like the little girl and her mother in line ahead of me at the Starbucks. The little girl, rhapsodizing over the cake pops in the display case, trying to decide what she would order when their turn came. The cookies and crème cake pop? Or something less sugary, which is probably what her mother would have preferred?

“Mommy, what could I order that would make you smile?” the little girl asked. My heart melted.

It’s so easy to pay attention to the ways in which we don’t get along. It’s so easy to assemble a litany of the annoying and the wrong.

But I think Brené Brown’s husband might be right. The world in which we give everyone the benefit of the doubt is such a better world to live in.

1. This is an essential part of this belief. We mess up, but we can always do better. Believing people are doing the best they can most of the time doesn’t mean you can’t hold them accountable. It doesn’t mean you can’t ask and expect them to do better, especially the people you love. It’s compassion with expectations.