Where was your baby picture taken

​Did you know a newborn baby has as many as 20,000 new neurons born every second? (Neurons are the cells in our body trying to mediate what's going on inside our body and outside of it in a way that keeps us alive and safe).

By comparison - me - well I'll be lucky to have 700 new neurons born all of TODAY.

Because those neurons wire together in response to our experiences, science tells us that our experiences in the earliest days of our lives have significantly more impact on who we ultimately become than the things we experience decades down the road.

Often, when I'm out speaking or teaching on the overall importance of what happens to us in childhood, I'll challenge the audience to ponder a question about the people they interact with.

I wonder where his or her baby picture was taken?

The idea of that question came to me after reflecting on a picture of my first-born baby - Elliott - 14 years ago. Elliott spent the earliest days of his life in a NICU.

I have a picture of my hand reaching into Elliott's incubator - his eyes are fixed on that hand - and in that moment several of his 20,000 new neurons were connecting to form memories of my face - so that his brain would always automatically recognize me as a form of love and safety.

To me that will always be Elliott's baby picture.

But in that same NICU, there were dozens of little babies who never had one visitor the whole time I was there. I'll always wonder how their neurons ultimately wired together. Who helped them feel loved and safe? Did they ever get to feel that way.....?

I'll always know where their baby picture was taken. That there was no hand in their picture.

I told someone the other day - I've come to believe that life is a big wrestling match. Some days, I know it feels like that wrestling match is with one another. But the reality - I think - is we are all in a wrestling match with our childhoods.

We are wrestling to make sense of them or overcome them or tap into the beauty of them - or all of that at once - but frequently the emotions of us wrestling with us spills over into our interactions with one another.

We humans are a judgmental bunch. So frequently, we don't look with much favor on those spillovers. We look at them and think "he's a jerk" or "she's a psycho" or "someone please lock that clown up and throw away the key."

I've come to believe in, even if imperfectly - and encourage - one final step before judging. And that is to wonder - where was his or her baby picture taken.

I get accused at times of trying to make excuses for peoples' behaviors.

But I'm not.

I'm trying to understand them. I'm trying to love the unlovable. Because I've at times been quite unlovable, and I've been grateful for the people who tried to understand me before judging me.

I'm grateful for the people who've taken the time to consider that there's a whole lifetime of experiences shaping the me they are currently experiencing. Grateful for the people who realize we are all in a wrestling match.

I think stopping - pausing - and wondering, where was their baby picture taken? I think maybe that's the ultimate form of empathy. And I happen to believe that as much poverty as there is in the world, there is no greater poverty than the poverty of empathy.

May is mental health awareness month. Maybe my tip for you today is to stop and pause if you have a challenging interaction with someone. Stop and pause and wonder - where was their baby picture taken?

It's a beautiful reminder that who you are interacting with is a product of a lifetime and not a display of one moment in time.

I promise you; you won't be practicing excuse-making - you'll be practicing empathy.

And we need more empathy.