Have you ever considered?...

That what you think about people actually affects them? How they show up in the world? How they feel and think about themselves? Our minds are so, so, so powerful. What we think about people, whether they are physically close to us or not, casts an impression on them. It’s like projecting visions upon a screen. Imagine the people around you are totally blank canvases. Without knowing them, your mind starts to come up with all sorts of stories and assumptions. Maybe half of those assumptions would be correct. But probably just as many would be incorrect.

Then your mind - or perhaps more accurately your ego - projects all sorts of things onto them. Like throwing paint on a canvas. (Some might call this the law of assumption. Sure. But that’s not where I’m trying to land this plane.)

This was never more apparent than when we all started wearing masks during the pandemic. You’d meet someone for the first time. You had absolutely no fucking clue what was going on underneath that paper-thin shield of chemically-laden thermo-plastic, but your mind. Your mind. Made up a whole-ass story as to who that person WAS, based on a type of look, that you didn’t even know was there or not!

Yeah. Now who’s the lunatic?