One of the ironies in life is that we always expect others to act flawlessly, yet we know nobody’s perfect.

We know that they — family members, friends, neighbors, or even the world leaders — are imperfect individuals.

Yet here we are expecting them to act the best way possible.

And when they fail, we criticize their mistakes and blame their actions.

This clearly shows that knowing and understanding are 2 different things.

We know that nobody’s perfect. Everyone knows it’s the truth. But only few people truly understand it.

But what can we do?

My suggestion is to think this way:

Every person you know (or everyone on this planet) is living in the ‘Land of Learning Process’. Nobody actually understands what they’re doing. They’re just trying to figure things out.

Yes, your parents are learning. Your teachers are learning. Your colleagues are learning. Your friends are learning. Your leaders are learning.

We are all learning. Still learning.

If we think this way, we can easily put things into perspective and catch ourselves the moment we’re about to criticize others.

We can easily activate our trying-to-understand mind instead of our trying-to-be-right mind.

Instead of saying, “I hate that person for being so stupid.” Or, “Those people must burn in hell because of what they did.” We can say, “I hate their actions. But why did they do that? There must be a reason for it.” (Try empathy.)

I’m not encouraging suppressing our emotions. In some cases, we can’t help but vent our anger and frustrations. That’s part of being human.

But I also believe that being human shouldn’t be an excuse. We have to take full responsibility and continuously understand ourselves and the world we live in.

The best part is? It’s free.