Lately I have been thinking about a small but persistent difference in how we interpret behaviour. When we look at ourselves, we tend to be relative. When we look at others, we tend to be absolute.
If I am late, there is a reason. The day was difficult, something unexpected happened, I am carrying too many things at once. If a colleague is late, it is easier to conclude: they are unreliable.
Of course, there is an explanation for this asymmetry. We have access to our own context. We know what happened before the meeting, what is happening in our lives, what we are trying to manage. Others only see the visible part. And perhaps, at a more basic level, we are also wired to make quick judgements about who is trustworthy and who is not. Absolute judgements are efficient. But efficiency comes at a cost.
There is a step further than this. What we do very naturally for ourselves is make synthesis. We hold together contradictory elements: I care deeply about this project, and I am exhausted. I can feel fully engaged in my job, and still wake up with a terrible headache after the night, then spend four hours on a train. These statements are not problematic for us. They coexist.
With others, we often skip this step. A single behaviour becomes the definition. They are unreliable. They are difficult. They are disengaged. We move from observation to conclusion without integrating the possibility that two things might be true at the same time.
Making this reflection took me back to May 2017, nine years ago. It was late evening, under a beautiful Andalusian sky. I was speaking with a friend, and we ended up in one of those conversations where you agree to disagree, but still leave with something important. He told me that I looked at the world too much in categories, too sharply, too absolutely. It made sense, of course. I come from a valley, and I do epidemiology. In both life and work, categories can feel natural. We create them to orient ourselves, to analyse data, to make sense of the world. I remember resisting his point. At the time, I thought clarity required definition. I was less convinced by ambiguity, less patient with contradiction.
It took me years to understand what he meant.
Some experiences make this easier. Moving countries did, for me. When you live across systems, languages, and norms, it becomes harder to assume that your first interpretation is the correct one. You become more aware of how much context is missing, how easily behaviour can be misread, how much of what looks fixed is in fact adaptive, and how hard life can be for people in ways that are not immediately visible. Perhaps this becomes more necessary as life becomes more complex. The more adult life fills with overlapping responsibilities, private worries, health issues, administrative burdens, family emergencies, long journeys, poor sleep, and work that still matters deeply, the more synthesis becomes necessary.
A person can be a good colleague and have a difficult month. A friend may not pick up the phone not because they are self-absorbed, but because they are struggling. Someone can organise a beautiful conference and, at the same time, be recovering from a small operation, worrying about a parent in hospital, or carrying frightening family news. We usually know this from the inside. The challenge is to remember it from the outside too. This is not an argument against judgement. It is an argument against premature definition. Sometimes the more truthful sentence is not: this is who this person is. Sometimes it is: this is what happened today, and I may not yet understand the whole of it.
We are usually willing to make that synthesis for ourselves. The real work is learning to extend a little more of it to others.
/Mar 2026
