Be Nice, Grasshopper!
“The wisdom of the Desert Fathers includes the wisdom that the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self---to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”
Barbara Brown Taylor
An Altar in the World
I wonder whether you dread the coming Presidential campaigns as much as I do. I listened yesterday as yet another candidate threw his proverbial hat into the ring. He started out cordial enough but then, as my grandmother would say, ‘he fell to judgin’. That is a long and all too familiar fall. I don’t know how we humans break this cycle of believing that our way is the right way and anything else is wrong. Maybe it is magical thinking on my part, but I believe people used to make more of an effort to be civil. Just this week, one frustrated airline passenger smacked another on the head for reclining his seat, sparking mid-air fisticuffs. That little discourtesy cost a small fortune when five fighter jets scrambled to escort the plane back to the airport and many thousands of gallons of jet-fuel were dumped into an already polluted atmosphere. I remember when we used to dress up in our Sunday clothes to get on an airplane! It was an honor to climb those rickety stairs, take a cramped little seat and be served a dry piece of chicken and rubbery vegetables. Wouldn’t we kill for that now—literally!
Carl Rogers, one of the pioneers of modern psychology, taught that the most transformative behavior human beings can offer one another is “unconditional positive regard.” That doesn’t mean that we agree with everything another person says or does, but that we respect their right to say it, believe it and act on it. There are now more than seven billion humans on planet Earth and within thirty years, that number will climb to nine billion. We will either learn how to treat each other with respect, or fall into chaos.
We, including me, seem to take ourselves way too seriously. We live in frustrating times, and we are taking our generalized irritability out on everyone around us. It must stop. Perhaps today we will all experience being sprung from the prison of ourselves.
Shalom,
Jane
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