The woman ahead of me in line was taking too long, fumbling with her wallet, apologizing repeatedly to the cashier. I felt that familiar irritation rising—until I noticed her hands shaking, saw the prescription bottles falling from her purse, caught the way she steadied herself against the counter as if gravity had become negotiable.
In that moment, I realized I had been watching someone fight for normalcy while battling something I couldn’t see, couldn’t name, couldn’t begin to understand. My impatience transformed into shame, then into a larger recognition that has haunted me ever since: everyone carries invisible wars.
The businessman on the train who seems rude and distracted might be rushing to a custody hearing that will determine whether he sees his children this weekend. The neighbor who never waves back could be drowning in depression so deep that lifting a hand feels like lifting a mountain. The coworker who seems perpetually angry might be the caregiver for a parent who no longer recognizes their face. The student who appears lazy might be working two jobs to send money home, sleeping four hours a night, running on reserves that ran out months ago.
We move through the world making assumptions about other people’s choices, judging their behavior against our own internal scorecard of how things should be done, never considering that their game might have entirely different rules, obstacles we can’t imagine, wounds we’ve never had to carry. I judged that woman for being slow until I saw her shaking hands. How many times have I judged people without even that moment of recognition? How many invisible struggles have I dismissed because they remained invisible to me?
The revelation is both humbling and terrifying: if everyone is fighting battles I know nothing about, then I am walking blind through a battlefield, potentially adding to suffering I can’t even see, judging soldiers by the wrong criteria, demanding performance from people who are already giving everything they have just to stay upright. Every time I’ve rolled my eyes at someone driving too slowly, every time I’ve been short with a service worker who seemed incompetent, every time I’ve written someone off as difficult or lazy or rude—I might have been punishing someone for the crime of struggling invisibly.
Arash had a classmate last year who never did homework, always seemed distracted, frequently got in trouble for not paying attention. The teachers called him lazy. The other parents whispered about poor parenting. I probably thought similar things. Then we learned his father had been deported, that his mother was working three jobs, that at eleven years old he was responsible for getting himself and his two younger siblings ready for school each morning, making sure they ate, helping them with homework he didn’t understand himself. He wasn’t lazy. He was exhausted. He wasn’t distracted. He was managing adult responsibilities while trying to be a child.
How many people do I encounter daily who are that boy, just in adult bodies? How many are giving everything they have to something I can’t see, leaving nothing for the things I expect from them?
But the recognition is also liberating in its universality. The patience I wish others would extend to me—for my bad days, my shortcomings, my moments when I can’t be who I usually am—is the same patience others are desperately needing from me. The understanding I crave for my invisible struggles is exactly what I can offer in return for theirs. When I’m short-tempered because I didn’t sleep well, when I’m distracted because I’m worried about money, when I’m withdrawn because grief is sitting on my chest—I want people to give me grace. And if I want that grace, I need to give it.
Maybe kindness isn’t about being nice to nice people. Maybe kindness is about recognizing that everyone you encounter is fighting battles that would bring you to your knees if you had to fight them, managing pain you couldn’t handle, carrying weight that would crush you. The person who cut me off in traffic might be racing to the hospital. The clerk who was rude might have just been yelled at by their manager for something that wasn’t their fault. The friend who cancelled plans again might be barely holding themselves together and used their last bit of energy to send that cancellation text instead of just disappearing.
I think about my own invisible struggles—the anxiety that sometimes makes leaving the house feel impossible, the grief that resurfaces at random moments years after my mother’s death, the imposter syndrome that whispers I’m inadequate at precisely the moments when I need confidence most. These struggles are real and debilitating, but they’re invisible. People who see me on good days have no idea about the bad days. People who see me functioning don’t know how much energy that functioning costs, how often I’m performing normalcy rather than feeling it.
If my struggles are invisible to others, then others’ struggles are invisible to me. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a fact. And once I accept that fact, I have to change how I move through the world.
The hidden wars are everywhere once you learn to look for them: in the extra beat before someone smiles, in the way people hold themselves too carefully, in the responses that seem disproportionate until you imagine what question they might really be answering. The woman who snaps at a simple question might be answering the thousandth version of that question today. The man who seems cold might be protecting himself from vulnerability that has repeatedly wounded him. The teenager who appears entitled might be compensating for feeling powerless in every other area of their life.
I’m learning to look for these signs not to diagnose people but to remind myself of what I don’t know. The gap between what I can see and what someone is experiencing is probably vast. Probably unbridgeable. Probably filled with complexity and pain and strength that I can’t begin to imagine.
This doesn’t mean excusing harmful behavior or accepting mistreatment. Invisible struggles don’t give anyone permission to hurt others. But they do suggest that my first response shouldn’t be judgment but curiosity, not irritation but compassion, not assumptions but humility about how little I actually know.
Tonight I want to move through the world like someone who knows that everyone is already doing the best they can with wars I’ll never see. The cashier who seems slow might be in pain. The driver who seems aggressive might be terrified. The family member who seems distant might be drowning. And I might be the person who makes their day slightly harder or slightly easier depending on whether I remember that their struggle exists even though I can’t see it.
Maybe this is what Allah meant about mercy—not just dramatic acts of compassion but the small, daily choice to treat everyone as if they’re carrying something heavy, because they are. We’re all carrying something. The weight differs, the shape differs, but the burden is universal. And if we’re all struggling under invisible loads, the least we can do is not add to each other’s weight, the most we can do is occasionally help lighten it, and the wisest thing we can do is remember that we’re all more fragile than we appear.