A friend once used this phrase to describe some particular work muddle I was dealing with. I was being paranoid about folks trying to mess with me. It looked deliberate. In my mind, they were scheming – and I was their intended victim.

> “Don’t worry so much. It’s a cock-up – not a conspiracy!”

No-one is looking to upset you in particular. Most often they’re too busy thinking of their own muddles!

And that’s the thing, right? Things are just muddly – and everyone is muddling through. For every calculated political move, there are 10 million muddly mistakes.

So far kinder on you and the world around you to remember that if something goes wrong for you – it’s most likely the result of oversight or confusion. It’ll be caused by a lack of thought or the wrong kind of thought.

Not saying that unkindness doesn’t exist. Or that it has to be conscious/deliberate to be unkindness. It’s just that most unkindness tends, in my experience to be self-directed. If anyone’s conspiring against you – it might be you!

This thought gives me hope when thinking of big systemic changes that need to happen: that it’s usually only a minority of folks who are actively unkind / conspiring. The rest are passively muddling along with the current mess. There is more to be gained from directing our efforts to clarify and educate – for the muddly majority – who might be quite willing to see things anew. Do they just need things unmuddled for them?