Getting The Full Picture

One early fall day, John was running late to work and noticed something odd: everyone had parked their vehicles in the parking lot incorrectly. Nearly every car had parked outside of the designated parking lanes. It was almost as if everyone had played a practical joke on him. As he drove around, desperately trying to find a spot, he became increasingly angry. Now he was going to be late, and it was all because his coworkers didn’t know how to park their cars! How could they be so dumb? Later at his desk, he was complaining to a friend about how badly everyone parked. His friend said, “Well, it was probably because of the snow.” “The snow?” John replied. “Yeah, the parking lot had a thin layer of snow this morning. You couldn’t see any of the spaces.” When we are angry or hurt, it’s so easy to look at a situation and immediately decide we are right, and the other party is wrong. This happens a lot when we experience conflict.