Take R50.

For some people, it’s an amount barely worth thinking about. It disappears on a coffee, a cold drink, or an extra item tossed into the trolley without much thought. For someone else, R50 can mean getting through the next two days. Neither person is wrong. They’re simply standing in different places.

The same is true of so many things in life. A school uniform. A tank of petrol. A doctor’s appointment. A pair of shoes for a growing child. A phone call. An hour of free time. What seems small to one person can feel enormous to another.

We look at situations through the lens of our own experience. If something wouldn’t worry us, we assume it shouldn’t worry anyone else. If we could solve a problem quickly, we wonder why someone else is struggling with it. But life isn’t lived from a single viewpoint.

A mother wondering how she will stretch the grocery budget until payday experiences the world differently from someone whose fridge is already full. A person searching for work experiences money differently from someone receiving a steady salary every month. Someone carrying grief experiences an ordinary Tuesday differently from someone whose heart feels light. You can’t see what they’re carrying. But it shapes how they move through the day.

Some of the kindest people I’ve met seem to understand this instinctively. They understand that what looks like a small problem on the surface may be sitting on top of a hundred other worries nobody can see. The forgotten bill is not just a bill. The missed phone call is not just a phone call. The late payment is not always due to carelessness. There is a story underneath.

We live in a world that encourages quick judgments. We see a moment and assume we understand the whole picture. Life is rarely that simple.

There have been seasons when I looked back and realised how much I was carrying without anyone knowing. On the outside, everything appeared normal. Inside, I was doing my best to keep moving forward one day at a time. Most people are. That is why kindness matters. Not because every struggle is enormous, but because we cannot always tell which small thing has become a heavy burden for someone else.

Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer is a little patience. Maybe understanding. Definitely grace. We never really know what another person is carrying.