Wouldn't you?
Think of all the unique things about you. Your childhood. Your parents. Your struggles. Your interests. Your skills. Your personality. Your choices…
Now realize that everyone else feels this special.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we all have the same human hardware — the same programmed drive to reproduce and preserve our identity, the need to belong, the proclivity to do things that give us emotional rewards.
But how exactly those things manifest, the reality they produce for each person, is distinctly theirs. If you could somehow experience every step of your worst enemy’s life, you would, by definition, make the same choices they did.
It’s easy to criticize someone’s behavior from the perch of your perspective. So much context is hidden from view. Not only is everyone fighting a battle you know nothing about, as the saying goes, but every person operates as an infinitely complex system with delicate ecology. Minor decisions often have major impacts that ripple throughout our lives.
We are each always making the best choices available to us. This may sound surprising: how can drug addiction be the best choice? Every behavior has an intended positive outcome for that specific person, in a specific context. It made sense at one time or another, for reasons unknown to others and sometimes inaccessible to the person themselves.
Tim Urban summarizes the benefits of keeping this in mind:
Rebecca Solnit puts it differently: