This Brutiful Life

For most of my life, I have operated with the belief that people are doing their best in this thing called life. However, this past year, I experienced quite a bit of emotional pain due to the words and actions of others, and I was no longer sure that the some of the people in my life were doing their best. Then, my maternal grandfather’s painting entered the picture (pun intended 😊).

A little over a month before my maternal grandmother passed away in 2023, I was visiting her and found out that my grandfather painted a painting for her (pictured below). I had never heard the story before that day. One of the only items I wanted from her house when she passed away was my grandfather’s painting.

My maternal grandfather was known for being a very sporty, athletic person. Artistic is not a word that I would have ever used to describe him. In fact, before learning about the painting, I would have bet money that he had never even picked up a paintbrush, let alone painted an actual painting. In that moment, I realized that there was a whole side of my grandfather that I never even knew existed.

When my grandmother’s house finally sold this year, and I received my grandfather’s painting, I immediately hung it up in my living room where I would see it every single day. I wanted the daily reminder that there is a lot more to people than what we think we know about them from the outside. Even if we think that we know them well, we don’t know everything about their background, life events, traumas, etc. When they say and/or do things that inflict emotional pain, and it doesn’t seem like they care about the pain they have caused, we may jump to conclusions about who they are as people. The truth, though, is that we probably don’t have any idea what is really happening internally. From the outside, it may look like they don’t care and aren’t really doing anything to change for the better. However, maybe they are trying to be the best people they can be, and it just looks different than how I would go about it. Maybe they don’t have the knowledge and skills to even understand how to do it differently. Maybe something in their life has made them incapable of asking for help or learning new skills. Maybe this is them truly doing their best, and they are already at their max capacity as a family member, friend, colleague, etc. Maybe they have such a sensitive soul and have had to suppress their emotions and feelings their entire life and no longer know how to access them. Maybe they were never taught how to connect with others on an emotional level. Maybe they were never taught how to ask for help in the emotional arena. Maybe they are afraid to ask for help. Maybe they are maxed out with emotional overwhelm because of another situation in their life. Maybe they lacked emotionally safe people in their early years to help them become emotionally mature.

Or, maybe they have a hard time facing the truth about themselves, so their ability to grow is severely limited.

(credit: @wethinkdeeply on IG)


The possibilities are endless when humans are involved. My grandfather’s painting is my daily reminder that we only know a small piece of why people are the way they are. We all struggle at times to be our best for a variety of reasons, and we can have compassion and empathy for others.

The key is to keep all of this in mind while also maintaining healthy boundaries.