Round Up

A wild new way to look at the world.

Most conflict lives in the gap between:

What Happened. And What We Decided It Meant.

Someone cuts me off in traffic. An email comes back shorter than expected. A comment lands with edge.

I don’t know what’s actually happening on the other end. But my brain doesn’t wait for data. It fills in the motive.

I’ve learned to round up.

The gap you fill in

When the facts are thin, I choose the more generous interpretation. Stress before malice. Distraction before disrespect. Clumsiness before cruelty.

Not always. Not blindly. But as a default.

This isn’t optimism. It’s a habit. One I didn’t develop to be nice—I developed it because the alternative was exhausting.

Rounding down costs energy. It turns small moments oppositional. It makes me defensive in places where there’s nothing to defend against.

Rounding up keeps me loose. It lets me stay in motion instead of bracing for impact.

Where it counts most

This habit is useful in traffic. It’s helpful in email. But it changes everything in close relationships.

The people I care about most aren’t always perfect communicators. Neither am I. Sometimes the intent is solid but the delivery is rough. Heat comes through when the message was just urgency. Tone overshadows substance.

I round up because I want them to do the same for me.

When I say something poorly—and I do—I’m hoping they hear past the edge and get to the point underneath. That only works if I’m willing to offer it first.

Most conflict is mistranslation

A lot of conflict isn’t really about disagreement. It’s about translation.

One person hears heat and misses the message. The other delivers truth without noticing tone. The conversation hardens fast.

Rounding up keeps it from calcifying. It gives both people a chance to stay oriented toward understanding instead of defense.

Sometimes I’ll just say, “I want to hear you. Can you say that again with less heat?”

It’s not therapy-speak. It’s a reset. It keeps the message alive without escalating the moment.

Patterns still matter

Rounding up doesn’t mean ignoring patterns.

If someone repeatedly dismisses feedback, violates boundaries, or keeps doing the same thing after it’s been addressed—that’s different. This isn’t about tolerating harm. It’s about not inventing it when it isn’t there.

There’s a meaningful difference between a hard moment and a hard pattern.

The cost of rounding down

I’ve watched what happens in relationships where people round down by default.

Conversations turn oppositional. Listening stops. Defense kicks in. Energy shifts from solving to protecting.

Over time, even good relationships start feeling heavier than they should. Not because the people are wrong, but because the interpretations are.

That cost is quiet. But it compounds.

What it’s changed

Rounding up has changed how I move through conflict. Not by avoiding it, but by not creating it where it doesn’t exist.

It’s made my closest relationships lighter. More durable. Less brittle.

Most relationships don’t fall apart because people disagree. They fall apart because people stop assuming good intent.

Rounding up keeps that assumption alive—not naively, but deliberately.

It doesn’t change what happened. It changes what happens next.