In addition to being a merge-as-soon-as-possible guy, I’m also a return-the-buggy-no-matter-what guy (buggy = shopping cart for my non-Deep South brethren).

Such an approach makes it easy to tell how many jerks were at Walmart before me – simply count the uncorralled buggies.

That’s probably too harsh. I’m willing to knock “jerk” down to “lazy” if they at least left it at the Four Corners – the spot where four parking spaces meet and where buggy placement causes the least amount of inconvenience for people trying to park.

Jerk, lazy, rude, inconsiderate – these are my immediate reactions to seeing a free-range buggy.

But if I’m being particularly mindful that day, I’ll stop and make myself imagine a scenario that would cause someone to leave the buggy where I wouldn’t.

Maybe they were elderly or injured and needed it for support, so they left it near their car door. Maybe their child was having a full-scale meltdown and they just wanted to get out of Dodge as quickly as possible. Emergency phone call? Medical issue? Family crisis?

I’m sure you can imagine others.

The interesting thing is that once I imagine those possibilities, my feelings begin to change. I no longer see a rude or inconsiderate person. I see someone dealing with circumstances I know nothing about.

Such moments never cease to amaze me.

They make me realize that I don’t necessarily have a problem with WHAT someone does – it’s more about WHY they did it.

I suspect many other people are exactly the same way.

The problem is that we rarely know why someone does anything. We only know what they did. So, we fill in the blanks ourselves. Unfortunately, we often fill them in with the least charitable explanation possible.

That’s usually not how we treat our own behavior.

When we’re the ones doing something others might shake their heads at, we have reasons. We were running late. We didn’t feel well. We were distracted. It was raining. We had a bad day. We were dealing with something nobody else could see.

I’m not saying those explanations are wrong. In fact, they may be perfectly valid.

What I’m saying is that the people whose behavior we are judging would probably offer explanations of their own.

The funny thing is that we already know this.

Most of us don’t want to be judged by our worst moment. We want people to understand the circumstances. We want them to know the context. We want them to realize that one action does not tell our whole story.

Yet we often deny other people the same courtesy.

So what are we supposed to do? Hunt down the person who abandoned the buggy and demand an explanation? Catch up to the driver who cut us off and ask what’s going on in their life?

No – please don’t do that.

What we can do is make a conscious effort to give people the benefit of the doubt. We can remind ourselves that there is usually more to the story than we can see.

Does that mean everyone is a good person who always has a good reason for doing what they do? Of course not. Some people really are careless, and some excuses really don’t hold up. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is a starting assumption, not a guarantee – and it costs us nothing to extend it first.

But I don’t think carelessness describes most people. Most are simply trying to navigate life the best they can, just like the rest of us.

So, the next time you spot a buggy abandoned in the middle of a parking space or get cut off by someone who didn’t bother to signal, try running the experiment I run. Imagine the version of their day that would make their behavior make sense. You may be wrong. But you’ll probably be a little less angry, a little less judgmental, and a little more human for having tried.

Dr. Raymond E. Barranco is professor of sociology at Mississippi State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Louisiana State University, and his work has been published in multiple criminology and sociology journals. Dr. Barranco invites readers to send feedback and sociology-related questions you’d like him to address in this space to [email protected].

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