Look past the behavior

A regular snaps at the barista over a drink that was made right. A dispatcher barks an order with no please anywhere in it. A patient's family takes their fear out on the aide who's only trying to help. The behavior is real, and it stings. But the behavior is the surface. Under it is a person, and the person usually explains the surface.

Marcus had a practice for the moment someone came at him: don't stop at what they did. "When another blames thee or hates thee, or when men say about thee anything injurious, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are" (Meditations 9.27, Long). Do that, he found, and "thou wilt discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about thee." The barber whose hands shake from a long night. The trucker three hours behind on no sleep. The clerk who just got chewed out by her own boss. Penetrate within, and the snap stops looking like an attack and starts looking like a person under pressure.

You don't excuse it. You see it whole. And what you see whole, you stop carrying home.