The Beauty of Meeting Someone Where they are at

​I've reflected many times here on my years as a counselor working with at-risk kids. I've said, when I began that work, I was awful at it. Awful in the sense that many kids' challenges became more challenging after spending a little time with me.

Can you say escalation?

Looking back on it, I know I wasn't good at what I was doing early on because I thought my mission was to change those kids. If I'm being honest, the definition of change was 'make them a lot more like me.'

Over time, I came to realize what those kids wanted and needed most in life, was someone to first accept them for who they were before ever trying to imagine who they should be. And what I ultimately discovered in that realization, most of those kids were already a lot closer to who they should be than anyone had ever imagined.

It was a valuable lesson. One I picked up on much quicker working with kids than I did relating it to everyone else. 'Meet them where they are at' is relatively simple to embrace when it's a strategy for helping kids. It's much more difficult when you ask it to serve as the foundation for all of your relationships.

Have you ever stopped to imagine just how complicated this human puzzle is we are trying to put together? This endless and futile work of trying to mold each other into the images we expect of one another. Images based on our own belief systems, systems that don't come pre-defined but largely made up as we go.

Is it no wonder so many people are exhausted and overwhelmed and depressed?

Maybe puzzle is the worst possible analogy. A puzzle suggests all the pieces are somehow supposed to fit together like the picture on the outside of the box. A puzzle suggests there is only one fit. It suggests that if a piece is missing or a piece doesn't nicely take it's place in the pre-cut order of things, the puzzle can never come together.

What if life is a puzzle that always fits? What if every piece fits together with every piece and the hurdle is we've simply refused to imagine that as the picture on the box?

What if our interactions with one another were driven not by trying to walk someone - or drag someone - to their place in the puzzle, but by trying to understand better where they already see themselves in that puzzle?

What if we started our interactions with the assumption you're exactly where the puzzle needs you today; maybe the puzzle will call you to be someplace else tomorrow?

I've had a lot of kids turned adults over the years say - thank you for being there.

Not thank you for helping me figure out who and where I needed to be, but simply - thank you for being there.

There's magic that happens when we show up and meet people where they are. There's a beauty in showing up in a life without an agenda - without the lid of the puzzle box in your hand to help you figure out where that life actually belongs.

Transformation happens.

And quite often, that transformation happens to the one trying to put the puzzle together, and not the piece they once thought was out of place.