“Everyone’s doing their best” is one of those phrases that used to make me shudder.
It sounds like something said at the end of a difficult week by somebody attempting not to lose faith in humanity entirely.
Defensive. Exhausted. Slightly defeated.
And deeply annoying until suddenly, one day, it isn’t.
Anyone who has:
- attended a committee meeting,
- worked in hospitality,
- joined a neighbourhood Facebook group,
- or attempted to merge in traffic near a motorway on-ramp
knows human beings are perfectly capable of behaving like overtired raccoons fighting over a fallen hot chip.
Which is perhaps why the phrase initially feels so irritating.
It sounds absurdly generous in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
And yet…
We remain overcomplicated mammals trying to maintain dignity while carrying reusable bags, replying to emails, and defending fallen food we didn’t even want five minutes earlier.
It occurs to me that enormous sections of society are maintained by mildly overwhelmed people trying very hard to be useful.
The woman organising the sausage sizzle roster.
The man obsessively labelling extension cords.
The neighbour reminding everyone bin day has shifted because of the public holiday.
The person bringing garlic bread nobody asked for but everybody is quietly relieved appeared.
From this more forgiving angle, the phrase begins to explain an astonishing amount.
The world becomes slightly kinder and noticeably less theatrical.
Most of us are trying to hold together a workable version of ourselves using tools assembled somewhat haphazardly from:
- upbringing,
- embarrassment,
- hope,
- old survival strategies,
- partial self-awareness,
- and conversations we should probably have had years ago.
This is not to say everybody is delightful.
Some people are still exhausting.
Some people avoid growth for decades at a time.
Some people turn minor authority into amateur theatre.
Some people carry unresolved issues into neighbourhood governance with the intensity of medieval border disputes.
And some people should simply not be allowed near a “reply all” button under any circumstances.
But even awful behaviour often makes a strange kind of internal sense to the person performing it.
Which does not make it acceptable.
It merely makes it human.
The more I pay attention, the more I think adulthood mostly consists of us making it up as we go.
Improvising marriages.
Improvising confidence.
Improvising professionalism.
Improvising dinner.
Improvising leadership while secretly googling things in the bathroom.
Entire organisations are quietly operated by people thinking:
surely somebody else here understands what’s going on.
Sometimes nobody does.
And yet, remarkably, most things continue functioning anyway.
Children get collected.
Flights depart.
Birthdays are remembered.
Dogs get walked.
Someone waters the office plant.
Someone brings garlic bread.
Someone notices you went quiet at dinner.
The remarkable thing is not that human beings are flawed.
It is that despite being flawed, most people still spend enormous amounts of their lives trying to take care of one another.
Sometimes badly. Clumsily. Indirectly.
Sometimes with sausages, sometimes with spreadsheets.
By overexplaining recycling systems, and asking if you got home safely.
Through insisting you take leftovers, and through reminding everybody to bring a jacket.
Which is honestly more moving than it first appears, because care often arrives disguised as logistics.
Anyway.
Chin up