"One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions." This stands out to me as being profoundly true about all relationships. Co

"One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions." This stands out to me as being profoundly true about all relationships. Communication is hard. We humans are powerful storytellers so we tend to be able to tell most any story to fit the facts on hand. In most cases I find what I am looking for. This is what DFW talked about in his terrific commencement address[1]: we all ultimately choose which story to tell ourselves. When you choose to assume/believe/hope your partner is a good capable person who is trying hard, you find yourself a part of a much better story than otherwise. And this principle extends beyond our most intimate personal relationships and can even be applied here, where most often the only thing we know about the person we are responding to is the brief couple paragraphs they hurriedly wrote in-between trying to get things done. How easy it is to tell a story that they are foolish or mean, if you choose to. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI