Hidden in Their Hearts

Most of those who move about us from day to day are carrying their share of trouble and disappointment and sorrow hidden in their hearts; and we, with unseeing wyes, are often indifferent, not knowing their cares, not understanding their sorrows. So often we misjudge those whose situation and circumstances we do not know. People we meet in an impersonal way in the places we patronize, people we pass in all the ways and walks of life may seem to us at times to be distant, sullen, preoccupied, impolite, in attentive to our wants and wishes. And we, with absence of understandings, often ignore their heavy hearts, their troubled thoughts, their sorrows, their pressing problems, and the weight of their worries. Every man’s burdens are important to him. Every man’s worries affect his work. No man is a mere machine. And if we want the answer to why people are as they are and why they do what they sometimes do, we shall need to know more about what is weighing on their thoughts, what is hidden in their hearts. A quarrel, an illness at home, worry about a wayward youngster, a personal disappointment, concern about some symptom, anxiety about money matters, friction, frustration – all can and do alter the attitudes and efficiency and outlook and actions of all of us. And if the men we meet, the people we patronize, those who serve us and those with whom we associate, and those whom we causally see in public and other places – if they aren’t always as it seems to us they should be, there may be some real reason that we would understand if we only knew enough. At least it would be well to withhold judgment and to have patience and to refrain from hasty conclusions and unkind comment where we are not sufficiently informed — as to the thoughts and hearts and feelings of our fellows. God grant us the wisdom to withhold judgment when we don’t know enough.