One Monday morning a couple of weeks ago, I stepped into Mission Coffee, as I often do, just before 8am. As part of my system for getting up early, I had a scheduled meeting over coffee with a friend of mine, John.
As I walked in, I noticed another friend named Joey hanging out in the shop. I’ve seen Joey at Mission at this time before, so I waved, grabbed my coffee, and sat down at a table waiting for John to arrive.
I started to send some quick emails as Joey came over and sat down, chatting with me as I waited for John. When John arrived, I introduced them both (as they are both musicians) and the three of us got to talking.
About 30 minutes in, I started to think, “Why is Joey still hanging around? John and I had a planned meeting here…it’s kind of rude to still be sitting here at this point…”
But the three of us had a great conversation. John and Joey got along well, we covered most of what John and I were going to talk about, and after over an hour passed, Joey turned to me and said, “Hey we forgot to talk about Unreal Collective.”
Knowing that Joey and I actually had a coffee planned another morning later that week, I said, “Yeah well we can talk about that Thursday, right?”
“Oh, I mean, we can…” he started.
And then it hit me. I had mixed up my own calendar, made plans with both Joey and John at the same time, and they were both just trying to make it work.
In fact, it had gone so well that Joey later told me he assumed I had done it on purpose to introduce the two of them.
It’s easy to jump to conclusions and place blame or hold someone else in contempt. It can’t be my fault, it must be someone else!
But everyone makes mistakes. Even you!
And even when a mistake or transgression is made – it may not have been intentional.
I love the aphorism called Hanlon’s Razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”