One of the best things We can do when people have done something wrong

(www.huffingtonpost.com) Kanye West used Jay Leno's prime-time debut Monday to offer another apology for ruining Taylor Swift's night at the MTV Video Music Awards and to say he's going to take some time off for reflection.  "It was rude, period," West said. He posted a second apology to Swift on his blog on Monday, and told Leno he wanted to apologize to the country music star in person.  West took a long pause when Leno asked what his mother would have said about the incident. West was very close to his mother, Donda, who died in November 2007. He said yes when Leno asked whether his mother would have given him a lecture.

So many people are looking at Kanye's behavior and expressing disapproval and disappointment.  They are appalled that someone would ever do anything to ruin such an important moment for a person.  That disappointment is to be expected though.  Of course what Kanye did was inappropriate.  Kanye has acknowledged that he behaved inappropriately and is not trying to justify his behavior.  However, is this situation really just about Kanye and reacting to what he did?  Isn't it possible that there is a little more going on and something we can personally learn and take away from this situation?

The alternaview is that this incident is a personal reminder of the role that understanding should play in our own lives when people have done things that we disagree with.  Although we don't simply dismiss and/or  justify people's negative actions, we push ourselves to understand by looking at people from a different perspective and taking other factors about them or things that have occurred into consideration.

In terms of Kanye, we can step back and consider that he has recently lost someone very important to him.  Although nothing justifies his behavior and we can't know for certain the reason(s) for his recent actions,  we can recognize his own genuine disappointment with his behavior and know that something caused him to stray from even his own expectation of who he is.  We can choose to understand him a little better by recognizing those times when we ourselves have done something, that may not be nearly as offensive, but nonetheless caused us to realize we had strayed from who we know ourselves to be.  If we are interested in doing so, there are always things we can push ourselves to consider that humanize people and allow us to understand them a little better.

We can choose to rely on this alternaview to control our responses when people have done something we feel is wrong.  Instead of arguing, reacting negatively, passing judgment or getting upset, we can instead choose to understand there are usually explanations and reasons for people's actions.  Perhaps we may not know or be able to identify the specific reason, however, just by acknowledging that there is an explanation, we can put ourselves in a better position to understand.

Why is it important to push ourselves to understand?  Understanding people and not reacting negatively to things they have done allows us to free our minds from any disappointment, frustration or other negative thoughts and emotions.  Freeing our minds from these sorts of negative reactions actually benefits us because we are not focused on things that only weigh us down. This in turn puts us in a better position to focus on those things that really matter and that we should be focusing on.