Before We Decide
A Slow Sunday publication on perspective, kindness, and the truths shaped by where we’re standing
Meet me here as I write, still bundled up while the morning holds its chill. Not ready for movement, coffee, or the day to break.
In thought.
Noticing how perspectives shift. In conversations with friends, family, colleagues, co-workers. In the scroll. In emails. In the news.
So much variation.
I find myself wondering whether that’s true for you as well. Whether what you’re seeing is difference, or simply reflection. And how much of what we take in is shaped by where we’re standing when we look.
There is a belief that says who you surround yourself with says everything about you. I believe it says something. I also believe we are far more intricate than that.
My world is very diverse, filled with people who hold different beliefs. I’m drawn to the character of another. Who they are as a person, with heart, navigating life’s experiment for the first time.
This is not to say I don’t believe in old souls, reincarnation, etc., but most of us don’t remember any of that. For many of us, each moment arrives new, shaped only by what we’ve learned and experienced so far.
How life shapes a person, how they grow from their moments matters to me.
My son once said to me, “I thought you believed everyone could change.”
That was something I believed for a long time. Now, it’s perspective.
Some changes don’t lead us in a life-giving direction. Some experiences alter us and leave us fractured rather than freed.
When I spoke of change before, it came from a kind of innocence. From the belief that if someone truly desired to do the work, to look within, to enter the dark places where trauma lives and allow it to be seen, they could change their life. That they could unlock themselves from patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that limit them.
That level of change is real. I believe in it because I lived it. It worked for me.
And we are complex creatures.
The same experience does not shape every psyche the same way. What opens one person can close another. What softens one can harden someone else.
That, too, is part of the truth.
People carry different views and beliefs based on countless life factors that have nothing to do with their character. It’s possible for two kind, generous people to stand on opposite sides of the same issue. The divide can come from heart, shaped by different positions and experiences.
So what am I really ruminating on as we sit together on this Slow Sunday?
It’s the ache I feel for humanity. As more information comes to light, and as it lands differently for each of us, the reactions intensify. Her side. His side. Their side. The certainty. The division. It’s painful to watch.
I read a publication on fear from a friend I follow on Substack, and she pointed out that fear doesn’t dissipate through fighting. The moment I read it, the news came into focus.
I can see it from all sides. Reactions cycling into more aggression. More reaction.
It’s escalating. It’s real. It’s fear. It’s difficult.
What if we’re right? What if we’re wrong?
What if?
And then I pull myself back into my own world. Into my small bubble of life.
What’s real over here.
When I was managing a large restaurant in Anchorage, one of my greatest mentors left me with a moment I still return to. We were working through staffing issues, and I had many ideas about how to proceed. He stopped me and said, “This is a long process. We are in the gathering of information stage. Observe. Listen. Take in the information from all angles. And when you think you’ve found the answer, look again.”
I question how things would be today if we allowed ourselves more time to observe, listen, and look again. It also makes me curious how many of us fear we would then be too late to respond.
I saw a post about sponsoring your neighbor. Calling your representative. These are good things. It also made me pause. She shared thoughtful advice while now living in Canada, far removed from the situation.
I noticed that too.
How many ideas, opinions, and beliefs do I hold about situations I’m not part of? How can I truly know any side of a story I’m only watching third-hand, third-million-hand, if I’m being honest?
My morals still respond. My lived experience still tugs. My emotions rise with opinions, anger even.
And still, I can’t know what’s actually true. Not fully. No matter how much I want to convince myself I “know.”
I believe that fear, the fear of being too late, is what keeps us moving before we’ve fully seen. Before we’ve listened long enough. Before we’ve allowed ourselves to feel what’s actually present. Urgency has a way of disguising itself as virtue.
And when we move that way, we often lead with our most generous assumptions. That’s where kindness lives. It’s also where it can be misunderstood.
We don’t learn to be kind. We are kind. Nice is learned, and it often disguises truth rather than revealing it.
Learning that not everyone is who they appear to be has been one of my hardest lessons this lifetime.
It took a decade for me to fully comprehend the depth of deceit and see the unkindness living in the dark crevices of my relationship with my ex-husband. An experience I was in, one-on-one.
On a larger scale, we often begin fighting battles before we have enough information to discern the deeper issues underneath them.
I bring this conversation into the light today as an invitation. Not to project, present facts, or settle into a position. But to question more. To bring it back to center. To self. That’s where the greatest change is made.
When we start at home. With what’s real in our own bubble of life. Give that our focus and love. From there, we can keep awareness at arm’s length. Pay attention. Listen. Gather information. And continue to look again.
And closer to home, the truth between you and me has two versions. Yours and mine. They may be similar. They may overlap.
They are still not the same.
In all of this thought, all of the unpacking of reaction, right and wrong, morals and beliefs, I find myself asking: how do we remain kind, show up as our best self, honor one another, and still discern our actions for the greater good?
Can we put aside our own point of view, even briefly, in lieu of gathering enough information to call us to look again? Can we allow ourselves to widen and see from a view that doesn’t match our own belief?
I wonder what that will feel like and whether that will change the way I receive the outer world from my intentionally crafted safe space. How I might spend time together with you, or you with me.
I see us fighting to honor the differences in each of us while also feeling protective of sharing differences of opinion. And in bringing everything back to center, in looking around me in my own neighborhood, I can’t help but consider that we are indeed much closer to one another than we are separate. Still, silence can linger within the limits of a society crafted to keep us apart.
Where do we go from here?
Today, we can allow ourselves to settle into our own world, where our actions have impact, where we know our own truth, even if only for this moment. We can share our love and our kindness in ways that don’t create further division. Sometimes that looks simple: a smile to a stranger, a heart on a post, or choosing to scroll on without comment when we disagree.
However you spend your day, as you enter your week, let it feel like enough.
Kissed by integrity,
Michelle
Thanks for wandering into this Slow Sunday. This post is public, which means it doesn’t have to stay here, if it feels right, let it wander a little farther with a share.
If this found you in a quieter place, somewhere beneath the noise of the season, in that space where things are not finished but are gently shifting, you’re not alone here.
This is what I care about. Sitting with what’s real. Letting the body exhale. Allowing old patterns and roles to loosen without force, so something truer can begin to lead.
If something in you feels ready to be met more closely, you’re welcome to reach out for a First Step session. Or you can simply reply to this note. We can listen together for what wants to unfold, at its own pace.