I still remember the day when one of my friends told me how surprised he was about one coworker who was facing stress at work.
By stress, I mean the stress that comes by making hard choices while not having enough power.
He noted that, for him, this would have been a no-brainer. He would just choose a way and deal with the consequences, while my coworker was consumed by the choice itself.
When I first listened to this, it very much made sense. They’re different people, it’s normal for them to have different ways to handle such scenarios.
But now that I think of it again, I can see that there’s something more we should consider: Past vs Present.
My friend was saying this from a different perspective, role, and more importantly: experience.
His struggles happened 20 years ago, personal struggles that impacted the way he enjoyed life and family. Those struggles were as real as the ones from my coworker, and they forged his spirit to what he was at that time.
My coworker, on the other hand, was going through similar struggles at that time, and still hadn’t figured out how to get out of them.
As with the plethora of things we learn from life, we might end up take some of our learnings from granted, as if they were part of ourselves from the beginning.
Some of them weren’t, we acquired them, and we don’t know which struggles people are facing. Something that seems easy to us might be a real challenge for others.