A man recently moved to town from a small town down the road. He filled his car up with gas at the service station, and while paying for his purchase, explained that he was new in town. He asked the station owner how things were here. The proprietor didn’t respond to his inquiry, but instead asked him why he moved here from the community down the road. The man said he didn’t like the people there. The owner then asked where he’d lived before that, and the man indicated he’d moved there from another town further south of that one. The station owner then asked why he’d left that town. The man replied that he didn’t like the people there either. Following his own response, he again asked the proprietor how things were in this town. The businessman handed him his change and said “I don’t think you’ll like it here either.”
Ever notice how people tend to like you when they feel liked by you?
Ever make judgments about people based solely on their appearance, their profession, political persuasion, their age, income, apparent social standing or religion? On where they live? Or on any of a myriad of other individual characteristics? Of course you have. If not, you’re, most likely, the only one who hasn’t. Ever judged whole groups of people with the same criteria? I know I have. But it’s certainly not something I’m proud of, or wish to practice as a means of self-protection. There are much better survival skills to cultivate than those in which indulgence would create only division, isolation and alienation. Some people choose isolation, quite often, over inclusion, and I am, on some level, a member of that group. But separation by choice is a conscious act, whereas alienation because of ones judgment of another, or of a group, is essentially fear based, and has no place in the development of a healthy individual or community. It is a sinister and self-destructive by-product of an insecure and inadequate relationship with ones self.
Not liking someone based on a particular behavior, or personality, is quite a different animal. We must all make determinations about what kind of social behavior we would tolerate, or participate in with any individual or group. Even what kind of people we prefer to be around. And that should always be our prerogative. But to judge a person, or social group, based solely on a particular behavior, to the exclusion of everything else that individual, or group, consists of, would be unfortunate. And I might even add that the judgment, and rejection of, them would, sadly, be ones own loss.
What if our own families judged us? And if they did, what if they judged us only on the basis of our weaknesses? Or our mistakes?
How it improves people for us when we begin to love them.
