In life you can never be too kind or too fair; everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. When you go through your day expressing kindness and courtesy to all you meet, you leave behind a feeling of warmth and good cheer, and you help alleviate the burdens everyone is struggling with.
If you can’t think what life must be like inside someone else’s skin, you can’t appreciate the hardships that others endure. Those who can and do look at life from another’s point of view usually (in my experience, always) find that they wouldn’t trade their life and their troubles for those of anyone else.
That’s a strange phenomenon. When we only look at our own problems and consider how hard life is on us, we seem to have the worst problems in the world. When we seriously think about the problems that others must endure–really learn what they are and how other people struggle to cope with them–we never want to trade ours for theirs.
Look at the people you meet every day, the people closest to you, with the same eyes. Every one of them struggles with problems and almost every one will hide them so that you learn nothing. Everyone wants you to think they are fearless, until proven otherwise. Everyone wants you to believe they never make mistakes, until they are caught.
Everyone wants you to believe that they can make it on their own, no matter what their problems and no matter how little help they have with them, until they break down.Sometimes that breakdown is emotional. Sometimes it shows up as an addiction
If you are only thinking about your own problems and not those of others around you, when they go over the edge you may not be prepared. You may not be able to help.
You may miss the signs and live to regret it for years afterward.
Other people have it worse than you. If you dig deep enough, you may find that everyone else does. Be gentle. Cut them some slack. Forgive. Offer a shoulder, or some time to listen.
You may save a life if not atleast you will certainly enrich your own in the process.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
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