A few days ago I was waiting outside an elevator that would take me down to the subway. I was standing behind a woman who had two little children with her - one in a stroller and one who was walking alongside her. I waited a little bit impatiently for the elevator to arrive and open. Then when it opened, the woman seemed to have some kind of problem moving herself and the stroller forward into the elevator.

Since I was already feeling impatient for having to wait for the doors to open, I began to feel irritated with this woman’s addition to the delay. “How smart do you have to be to walk a few steps forward into an elevator?!” I thought to myself. It only took her a few extra moments to get the stroller into the elevator - but I couldn’t understand why she was having a problem at all and that was plenty of time for several sarcastic thoughts to flit through my mind.

I walked to the back of the elevator (it’s a big one - this is part of a trip I take every work day), turned around and then I was able to see this woman from a different angle - and then I knew that the woman was missing one arm - her left arm ended in a stump right above where the elbow should have been.

I immediately felt pretty bad about the sarcastic thoughts and pigheaded resentment I had been feeling towards this woman. I began to imagine the difficulties she must encounter on a daily basis, trying to truck two children around while having only one arm. For her, pushing a stroller forward in a straight line (over any uneven or bumpy surface) is probably a challenge sometimes.

This was just another reminder that I should be slower to judge, slower to anger. If I can learn to be a little more patient in life, then maybe I’ll have time to understand what is happening before I evaluate a given situation or person.