A few days ago, I went out for an aperitif with my mother. As we walked into a café, we met a four-year-old girl called Sofia.
After watching us for a few minutes, she started talking to my mother as though they had known each other forever. She asked why she was dressed all in blue that day, then pointed out that her lipstick wasn’t blue. A little later, she decided to make a drawing and gave it to her. When we got up to leave, she gave my mother a hug.
On the way home, I asked her what she had learned from that encounter.
She replied, “That I’m good enough just as I am. I don’t need to change. I’m fine exactly as I am.”
That answer stayed with me.
Sofia knew nothing about her. She didn’t know her story, her personality, her fears, her strengths or her struggles. Yet, within just a few minutes, she had made her feel seen, recognised, chosen and accepted.
Thinking back to that moment, I realised that we all experience situations capable of changing our internal state in a matter of moments. It can happen through a child who approaches us naturally, the look from someone we are drawn to, a conversation in which we genuinely feel heard, or a shared laugh.
Our nervous system is constantly processing information from the environment and from our interactions with other people. Some of this information is processed before it reaches conscious awareness and contributes to shaping our internal state. The way we are looked at, listened to and welcomed, the tone of someone’s voice and their facial expressions all become part of that information and influence how we experience a situation and the meaning we give to it.
What we learn from an experience does not depend solely on what happens. It also depends on how we observe it, the questions we ask ourselves and the meaning we choose to give it. That is why the very same experience can leave one person untouched, profoundly affect another, or take on a completely different meaning for the same person at different stages of life.
What life brings can always teach us something. The real question is how we are choosing to look at it.