~a column by Colleen O’Brien
This quote above has been floating through my life for a year or two. I wrote it down without attributing its owner, which I regret. I searched Google, but even the Great G herself could not come up with the person who said it.
(Obviously, Google does not know all. This was disappointing as well as satisfying; I found it refreshing to learn that she, if only in one instance, could know as little as I. G was doing the best she could.)
In a book group discussing The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeanette Walls, I defended Jeanette’s mother, who was flakey, self-centered, troubled. She seldom served meals or cleaned house because she hardly ever left her art studio. She had inherited land but refused to sell it to make her family’s life tolerable. When I said to the book group, “She was doing the best she could,” three women took umbrage and attacked me for giving the benefit of the doubt to a bad mother.
At the time I came across this quote I was not thinking of other people, I was thinking of myself. I needed to at least hope I was doing the best I could and wanted others to think likewise. In other words, no judgment, folks. If I could do better, believe me, I would.
I soon assimilated the controversial quote into my dealings with the lives of friends and strangers alike – assuming positive intent on the part of others regardless of their behaviors. Yes. A good point of view to maintain. Most of us are doing the best we can. And if I doubt it or am uncomfortable with how the person is doing the best he can, I don’t have to hang out with him.
Perhaps there are born sociopaths; I know there are people who learn to be vile because they’ve been treated vilely. But I do believe that the general run-of-the-mill human is struggling with finances or kids or health, befuddled by relationships, always preoccupied with one inconsequential thing or another. In this broad spectrum of non-sociopaths, people are doing the best they can.
When my husband and I first traveled around the country with a trailer, meeting all kinds of people from everywhere in the U.S. and Canada, I was struck by how people were friendly one day and, often, unfriendly the next. It soon dawned on me that I didn’t have to feel ignored or shunned because I could pigeonhole them as mostly old, which meant they couldn’t see, couldn’t remember or had hemorrhoids.
When I found the quote about humans doing the best they can at the moment, I could smile, say hi whether they said hi or not, and keep walking. I no longer had to make up stories about hemorrhoids because I was no longer hurt that they didn’t say hi.
Sometimes I myself can’t even smile. That I’m walking and acknowledging at the same time is a feat in itself.
Like you, I’m doing the best I can.
