Meet someone exactly where they are….

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.
- Winne the Pooh

She has a tendency to panic. Makes it hard to trust her.
He is chronically greedy. Grew up dirt poor. Money is everything.
She is a channel of pure wisdom, a naturally gifted seer.
He is a genius, able to connect vast intellectual concepts.
She is fragile, new, and green to the concept of cause and affect.
He is angry, wounded, perpetually antagonistic.

People are where they are – despite our desire for them to be further along, more evolved, more fun, closer to our level, less intimidating, more relatable, easier to access, or simply more like us.

If you take the desire for someone to be different out of the equation – you can meet them where they are. You can meet them in the real moment. You can meet them in their despair or their magnificence.

And when you truly meet them, with no wishing for something different to wedge you apart, you’ll know what to do. You will have the compassion to be calming, the humility to be reverent, or the wisdom to walk away. The question becomes, how would you treat “wounded,” or “rage,” or “brilliance”? Not how would you help (or coerce, or plead with) someone be more healed, or less angry, or more down to earth.

They are where they are. Consider the facts, spare yourself the desire for change. Remove the friction of wanting to improve them. And engage. It’s the only way change happens.