Life is hard for people. If you can make things easier for people.
Working in IT we are often accused of making things hard. We do make things hard. Security always complicates things for everyone including IT. No one likes having to remember passwords, and password managers don’t always work great. If we keep this is mind, we can make things easier for people.
Most of my working life is spent solving problems. I think that I excel at troubleshooting and can figure things out. The reason that I share this is to say that not everyone is good at troubleshooting. In order to troubleshoot you need background knowledge and experience, and I know that not everyone has that with computers. Therefore when I help people I can understand why it is frustrating for them. It is frustrating for me when things don’t work as they should just like anyone.
No one wants to be frustrated, and yet sometimes people seem to enjoy making things more difficult for others. We see this in laws that are passed that are contradictory and in certain jobs which seem to encourage people to be jerks. There are even jobs that legally protect you from any consequences for being a jerk. How great for them is that?
We all can feel generous when things are going well for us, but rarely are people able to help others when life is difficult for them. Yet when life is most difficult for you, it is the most crucial to be helpful and make things easier for others. Why?
I’ll give you an example. If you are going through some kind of health crisis like Covid or whatever, most people don’t tend to be in a good mood. However the people who are trying to help you and love you are stressed and you being a jerk is adding to that stress. I admit that I am not always sweet when I am sick but I try to remember that people are helping me and that they have needs too. Life isn’t all about us, no matter how easy and justified we feel in thinking so.
Making things easier for people is always remembered by them. At the end of our life what do we really have? We have our experiences, and the consequences of our life with others. Do we want to look back with regret knowing we could have done more, or done all we can and feel good that we did all we are capable of doing?