See What You May
May 12th, 2017 by Kimberly
Whenever I see someone, may I never feel superior. From the depth of my heart, may I really be able to appreciate the other person in front of me.
TIBETAN PRAYER
via The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
My exercise life has to rotate or it will disappear. For awhile, it involved running on the beach. After that, walking the stairs on the hill worked for me. A few months ago, I went through a phase where I did yoga at night while listening to inspirational audiobooks. Scrolling through my library’s website of downloadable books, I found The Book of Joy, a transcript of conversations between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
They offer many wise viewpoints in this tome, as well as stories from their lives and lessons they’ve learned along their eighty-plus years each, but this one particularly struck me. Confession time: I struggle with it. I don’t think myself unreasonably talented. I’m good at some things and really not good at others, and I’m cool with that most of the time. Like most of us, however, I tend to view myself as being right about opinions and other people as wrong. When I meet someone who is a diehard believer in supply-side economics, it’s hard not to think, “Wow, how short-sighted of them.” I can, of course, soothe myself with the idea that many of them have the same thoughts about me and my more Keynesian views. But wouldn’t it be nice if all of us could leave aside our condescending attitudes and view the other person as a human, a collection of thoughts and experiences that have brought them to this point? What if, instead of saying, “Are you crazy? Do you know how wrong that view is? Let me tell you why,” we could try, “Wow, that’s a different viewpoint from mine. Tell me your story. What brought you to this opinion?” And after they tell us, what if we didn’t judge and say why they were right or wrong, but just smiled and told them, “Thank you. Now I understand you better.”
Appreciating our fellow human beings features high in the tenets of most faiths. Practicing yoga has taught me Hinduism’s “Namaste” (May the divine in me honor the divine in you), which reminds me of my Christian church’s favorite, “I see Christ in you.” No matter how differently we may see the world, we are all human beings walking around with blood in our veins, breathing air, dealing with the blessings and drawbacks of gravity. That deserves more of our attention than it usually gets.
Different creations, all with value.
Kimberly hopes one day she can see this in people as well as plants.
