Look for the Good

I realized something about myself recently, a trait that isn’t pretty and one which I hope to change.

For the most part it seems I see the bad in people. I can trace this back to things and people in my life and blame it on that, however I won’t change if I do, so I choose to move forward and not make excuses. I want to see the good first and foremost.

It’s so easy to turn against a person, to see things from our own vantage point, and sometimes with negative input from others. If enough people tell us that a person is a failure of sorts, or a problem, whatever it may be, we start to believe it.

I watched the movie “Doubt” for the second time recently. I won’t give away the ending, but in the movie the nun who leads the school accuses the priest of doing something inappropriate with a male student. She sees the bad in the priest. The nun has black and white thinking, she is certain that she’s right. And he can do nothing right in her opinion including how much sugar he uses in his tea, the length of his nails, and so on. You get the point.  

When we only see the bad, when that’s what leads us, rather than finding the good first (and always) it’s easy to be led down the wrong path.

My eyes were opened to this whole concept when I found that I had developed a negative attitude about someone who once had an important place in my life. I only heard one side of the story: the negative side. And I heard it a lot. As we all know there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

I walked in this person’s shoes just long enough to get it, to realize what a mistake I had made.

I encountered the beast firsthand, the same monster that had been attacking this person. That’s when all the pieces fell together … sort of, although it was anything but immediate.

If you haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes, you won’t know where they have been, what their struggles are, why they behave in a particular way, and especially how they feel.

But if you face the same monster as another it opens up a whole other side. It gives you knowledge that is missing when you only hear the negative about someone.

You may wonder about this beast, monster to which I refer. It’s comparable to watching a bear play from your picnic table. The cute bear you see is like Winnie-the-Poo. He eats honey and seems sweet and loveable. But he’s not Winnie-the Poo. He’s actually a very real bear who is just who he is, but you don’t want to be in his path when he’s angry, or have him mad at you, because that’s when he becomes a monster, a beast that is unrelenting and will take whoever he must in his path to get what he wants.

When the monster first attacked me I didn’t see outside of myself, it was all about me and my pain. But through the grace of God I was given insight via a conversation or two and the light bulb came on with a very high wattage.

It was a knowing that you know that you know moment. Having faced the wrath of the beast, I knew exactly why others behave as they do having experienced it too. It makes perfect sense.

So here I am a while later having made amends where necessary for any part I played in the monster’s game. I learned so much. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders and the world shines more brightly.

Now I have the opportunity to carry this knowledge and wisdom with me into the future. I hope I do. I pray that I don’t forget the lesson of seeing both sides before making a judgment.

I hope I see the good first and always.

Do No Harm

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope … and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples … build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy

 Wow, “a tiny ripple of hope” … that when combined with other ripples can “build a current,” one that can knock down oppression and resistance.

Those are powerful words and while I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while it’s taken me a very long time to get started writing it.

You see, what I want to write about isn’t about hope, it’s about what happens when evil and destructiveness are involved in the midst of something that’s supposed to be good and healing.

You may know what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a few examples.

Have you ever been involved with a group of people that was trying to do something good for a cause? And all the while the group is trying to do it there is one person, or a handful of people, who just continue to bring negative energy into the situation. There’s bickering amongst the group and soon few people show up to help.

I think about jobs I’ve had where one supervisor continuously said bad things about his supervisor to his staff. I felt the tension and negative energy in that situation and I often wondered if it bled over on the project we were doing. 

It’s the same thing in some churches. Those who claim to be doing God’s work are often not really doing that at all. Because if they were really doing what God commanded there would be love in their hearts instead of constant gossiping, lying, judgment and just overall bad feelings. How can a person say they are serving God and praying for good things to happen, when they spend more time putting down others and lying?

It happens at jobs, clubs, churches, and in families.

Do no harm

We’ve all heard that over and over and I discovered that it’s used in some religions as well as in the oath doctors used to take:

• The Golden Rule in Buddhism is: Do no harm.

• When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was to do no harm, and

• The original Hippocratic Oath, once sworn by all doctors required that its adherents “do no harm” to their patients.

It’s used in many more places than I listed, but the point is made, it is used in different religions and by the medical community.

How do we do harm? We don’t do harm by focusing on love which encompasses all things good, but we do harm when we focus on all that is wrong. We talk about it to whoever will listen and we keep the evil energy alive.

We do harm when we don’t show love. If I look someone in the face and smile really big at them when I want a favor, yet I won’t give them a passing glance when I don’t need something, that’s not love and I find it unlikely that many folks would think it was.

It’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar, and so it is with people, with success, with doing right.

We do what we know is right to do, even when it would be easier to do wrong.

What I’m saying is that if a small act of kindness — a ripple of hope — can spread out and have a snowball effect for good, then too, can a negative act have the same impact.

To me, if there’s negativity behind the scenes, then the energy from that is going to show in real life.

If sending up prayers can heal, then can’t also speaking evil harm? Does it harm even if the person spoken about never knows it was said?

It takes just as much energy to say a bad thing about someone as it does to say a good thing, maybe more.

Another thing to remember: the majority is not always right.

Just because you may have found a group of people to befriend who support your negativity, that doesn’t make it right.

Most people would probably say that it matters not what they say or do in private, that it doesn’t reflect upon their public work. I disagree. I think that our negative energy shows up in our lives and causes us not to succeed where we are most striving for success.

I implore you to always strive to do the right thing no matter what. Yes, we all fall short — I never claim to do the right thing all the time. But I do know that the attitude of frustration that says if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, has never worked for me even though I’ve followed that path before.

Do no harm in person or behind another person’s back.

Knowing Others

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”
—John Lubbock

When it comes down to it, there are very few people who we really know. We may know someone for a lifetime and not know that they have something so painful held inside that they never tell it to anyone. We may judge a person for not acting the way we think they should, when the reality is, we don’t even know how they should act with something that is so painful that they don’t tell anyone, sometimes even a spouse or best friend.

There are those of us who are open books, who may have had bad things happen to us or done bad things. We are able to talk about and work through the issues. Still others struggle daily with something so severe to them that they have kept it a secret and it’s too painful to let it out.

When we start to judge another for their actions we can stop and remind ourselves that we do not know what is truly going on with them because we have not walked in their shoes and they may have more pain than we can imagine.

What we can do is show people love, whether they show it to us or not. We don’t stand for abuse, but we also don’t expect others to act the way we do. If we are aware of a change in someone and we are worried about them, we can talk it over with that person and offer our assistance to get them help.

All of us struggle. That’s something that is important to remember. While some are bright and sunny to everyone they see, their pain could be worse than the grumbler who complains about everything. We can’t judge a book by its cover.

Showing love and compassion for those who seem at odds with us or life may be just what they need to finally open up. We shouldn’t force this on anyone, but just make ourselves available to let them know we care.

Treat the troubled with love and pray that they will get the healing and care they need.

Good and Bad Judgment

“Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.”
—Rita Mae Brown

Our lives do not always follow a path that is smooth and easy. Some of us went down the road of drug abuse or alcoholism and had lots of experiences from bad judgment that taught us. If we had not made the decisions we made that caused us pain and loss we might not have learned the lessons that we did.

Our experiences can help others, and we never want to see someone else go down that same road, but because we have we cannot judge when they do and we find ourselves more able to understand why.

I often find myself beginning to judge another for some action or behavior. More often than not the situation is very similar to one I was in when I was the age of the one I am standing in judgment of. It causes me to pause and reflect upon my own life and how readily able I find myself to judge someone else.

My path took me to the depths of despair, but the lessons learned many years ago have stayed with me; they usually do when we truly find ourselves that far down. 

I was reminded of this when a famous athlete from my home state, who at the time of this event was in the NFL making millions of dollars, was busted for cocaine possession. It was shocking and many people were interviewed or posted online their reaction to it. Words such as stupid, loser, thug and others were thrown around and I wondered how many of those who were casting judgment had ever done anything they regretted when they were 25 years old.

We often make mistakes in our lives and our memories are short lived about them sometimes. We can be grateful for our lessons learned and realize that when others make mistakes that it’s time for them to learn something too. We can give others the same right to make a mistake as we had.

Bad judgment teaches us lessons, but we are not to judge others for theirs.

Withholding Judgment

“Judge not, lest you be judged.”
—The Bible

We have many opportunities every day to judge other people. We judge looks, behaviors, wealth, poverty, single, married, gay or straight, but in so doing we only waste time and energy.

When we judge others we are often acting out of a place of fear rather than love. If we find fault with the behavior of another person, we can avoid contact with them, but it is not our place to judge if they are “good” or “bad.”

Each of us is a unique creature with years of experiences that are ours and ours alone. To judge the actions of another based upon the little bit of knowledge that we have about them and what they have lived through is not fair. Like the saying goes, “never criticize a man until you walk a mile in his shoes,” you just never know where someone else has been and what experiences caused their actions so to stand in judgment is worthless.

Usually when we judge another we are either trying to make ourselves feel better or putting ourselves down. We feel better than or less than when we look at another and decide that they are or are not doing what we think they need to do.

Anytime we are judging another person we don’t have time to love them. Judging others brings about negative thoughts and keeps us apart. It interferes with close relationships and causes disharmony.

We ought to let a person be who they are without our judgment. We are not superior or inferior to others. Our judgment does not correct another person’s poor behavior, rather when we feel judgmental we would better serve them by saying a prayer for them.

When confronted with a situation where we feel we are standing in judgment it helps to stop and repeat the phrase to ourselves, “judge not lest you be judged.” That will usually stop our negative thoughts about another.

It’s easier to judge than to love sometimes, but love has greater rewards.