Lest Ye Be

Inspirational song: Your Mother Should Know (The Beatles)

For the second time this month, the person delivering the moment of inspiration for our Rotary club lunch meeting actually inspired me beyond a brief moment of reflection. It was given by a woman with the same profession as I (although much further along in career success than I), who sits on the same committee that I do. She spoke of an educator in Denver who started a trend. This teacher asked of his/her class to write anonymously "something I wish my teacher knew about me." The answers were heart-wrenching. Things like: "My writing journal isn't always signed because my mother isn't around very often," or "My father was deported to Mexico when I was three and I am sad because I haven't seen him since," or "I'm always cutting up and laughing in class because school is the only place I feel happy." The teacher suggested this exercise to peers all around the country, and the same sorts of responses kept cropping up. It inspired a lot more empathy and understanding between the educators and students, which can yield great benefits, for reasons that should be self-evident.

I try to approach most people this way. I not only attempt to give them the benefit of the doubt for having circumstances that I may not be aware of that make them behave the way they do (even when it totally crosses my own purposes), but I compulsively try to put myself in their minds, to guess what those motivations might be. I am sure that sometimes I am far more forgiving than I ought to be in some situations, when people's motives are not so pure, but I prefer that to my less than charitable side that sometimes comes out, when I devalue people wholesale for the positions or actions they take. I would much rather forgive the undeserving than condemn the innocent. I'm guilty of judging in both respects, but one leaves me with peace. I can, as the Mr says, let them deal with their own karma if they are of evil intent.

I haven't let this topic simmer in my mind enough on this day to have a long essay on it tonight, but I think from here I'll go have a (very) late dinner and ruminate on the possibilities that this opens up. It was a moment of inspiration, after all, not a closed-door judgement. Time to let my thoughts run where they may.