I was shopping at PetSmart several weeks ago. Only one cash register was open. I was third in line and the customer being helped at that moment was redeeming every cat food coupon ever produced by Purina. The line grew longer as two women joined the cue behind me. The latest addition to the line was an older woman--early to mid-70s--who had one arm in a sling. She awkwardly balanced a small box on her "good arm" all while grumbling about the length of the checkout line...in which she was the 5th person waiting.

Then, out of nowhere, a PetSmart employee appeared to open a new register. She called out, "Next person in line please!" Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding...WE HAVE A WINNER. The guy in front of me--who had already placed a 25 pound bag of dog food and a box of milk bones on the conveyor belt--gestured for me to go ahead. As I began to push my cart to the new register, I noticed the old woman with her arm in a sling was already at the register. She had bypassed me and two other people. She didn't even look back in our direction with a courtesy look of remorse where she mouths the word "sorry" to suggest she recognizes the slight but really is in a hurry.

I grumble to the woman behind me, "Survival of the selfish, I guess." And I had that woman figured out. She was a self-absorbed and entitled person who regularly did this kind of thing. She is privileged. Boy, is she privileged. The kind of person who thinks her poop don't stink. I even knew who she voted for in the last Presidential election. My mind was racing with brilliant assessments of this line-cutter's sociopathic history. Damn, I'm good.

In a moment of cerebral calm--when my brain had taken a break from assessing and diagnosing the flaws of everyone around me--it occurred to me that I'd been successfully identifying the source of everyone else's flaws and pitfalls quite a bit lately. Was I just that perfect or was something else going on? Then I stumbled upon an episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast with Amy Morin on "Why Assuming the Best in People Benefits You."

"Huh," I thought. "I Wonder what that's about."

So, I listened to it. It was short but packed a punch. Amy Morin, the podcast host, seemed to be talking to me. It was like she had been in that PetSmart several weeks ago. Morin said (she didn't really say this), "What if that woman with her arm in a sling had a dog at the emergency vet clinic and she was in a hurry to buy the fiddle bop in order to pick her up and get her home to rest? What if her daughter was in an accident and PetSmart woman was racing to get a fiddle bop for her grand dog so that she could return to the hospital to be at her daughter's bedside?"

There are a million "what ifs..." I could come up with but Morin's message was clear: I am not a mindreader and I have no idea what that woman is dealing with. She might be a privileged self-centered jerk but she might not be. By assuming the good in her, I would have been spared the anger, annoyance and bitterness that consumed me for the next hour and thus another person's actions that I could not control would not have disrupted my well-being.

Check out this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast below.