“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
-John Steinbeck
Be aware of blindness. See the best in people. See them as they really are. Do not place them in the chains that bind you.
Think about your life. Think about how much of your life you wear on your sleeve. That is, think about how much of your experiences that lie open for the world to see. Consider all the experiences that make you up as a person and have contributed to your personality and character and life story. Each person is a book, albeit closed. It is up to us to open these books. Love is the key that conquers all.
I know I certainly don’t waltz around inviting people into my inner chambers, into the intimate reflections of past experience. People must show an earnest interest.
All too often we judge others with nothing more than a handful of encounters, mostly impersonal. Here is a person, composed of years of experience that shaped and molded their being, and we overlook the beautiful opportunity to extend a charity and a benefit of doubt that would allow us into their world, into a realm of experience previously undreampt and unbeknowst to us. All too often we over look people as they are. I was always fond of the quote “We never see people as they are; we see people are we are.”
So yea… we look at people, but we rarely take the time to see them. To appreciate the depth of their experience. One problem is that most people aren’t even aware of the quality of their experience. They don’t value their originality. Instead they lead an inauthentic life and never leverage their unique experience, or they sell out to the collective experience of the masses. As a result, our inquiring eye is mislead to think there is nothing there. How wrong we are. There is always so much more than meets the eye. The surface is nothing compared to the volume.
Take time to see people. Love them. That is the best charity of all.
Anyway.
William Dare 