5 Ways to Add Meaning and Fulfillment to Your Life

by Lee Walton

"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

- Viktor Frankl

Below I will outline 5 ways to add meanings of life, as I see them.  This list isn't meant to be prescriptive (“This is the meaning of life, because I say so.”) so much as they are descriptive (“Based on my observations, this is how people add meaning to their life.”)  The categories aren't perfect, overlap in some places, and perhaps even could be added to.  The point of them, however, is to get you thinking - to allow for thoughtful consideration about how you are living your life.  Are you living life as fully as you could be?  Are there aspects of your life that you may be neglecting?  How can that be fixed?  Please consider these questions while reading and, as needed, open your heart to changing your life for the better.

Relationships

Life is all about meaningful relationships.  It’s about: looking deep within your lover’s eyes and seeing care, compassion, and connection looking back; snuggling with a beloved pet; the loyal bond forged between life long friends who have been through it all together; and enjoying company and conversation with those that share values, ideals, and passions.  We are inescapably social creatures and we are most alive and actualized when we are living in community with others we care about.

Reflection questions: Do I have enough love in my life?  How can I find healthy, fulfilling love?  How can I give and build love to another? (Gentle reminder: This about so much more than romantic love.  Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have that right now.  There are a myriad of other forms of love and meaningful relationships to focus on.)

Practices to enhance your relationships: Set aside time together. Don’t wait for others to initiate contact; be an initiator.  Love others as they want and need, not how you want and need love.

Causes

Life is about involving yourself in causes that are larger than yourself.  It’s about making the world a better place, getting caught up in building something lasting, and improving the life of others.  Think of those often revered by history - Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, Mother Theresa, etc. - they had one major thing in common - they lived to improve the world.  It is this passion that sparked a flame in their own heart, as well as the hearts of the world.

Reflection questions: What are the causes I care about most?  What am I doing to see their success?  What should I be doing?

Practices to enhance your involvement in important causes: Deeper is often better than broader.  Find causes and organizations that you believe in and find out what they need.  Don’t limit yourself to thinking about giving money.  Money is cheap.  What is often far more valuable is time and talent.  Give what you can where you want!

Experiences

A symphony, a glass of wine, the sound of rain on a summer afternoon, a touch, a souffle, jumping out of a plane, the stillness of a snow covered forest - each one of these experiences enriches the lives of those that partake in them.  You may be tempted to think of this life purpose as shallow.  I hope that you won’t. Enjoying our five senses is vital to enlivening our mind to the beauty and "worthwhile-ness" of life.  They flood our brain with pleasure neurotransmitters that awaken our minds to the fullness of life.

Reflection questions: What are my favorite experiences?  Within healthy moderation, how can I enjoy these more?  What experiences do I want to have but never have?  How can I seek those out?  What are experiences that I haven’t had in a while but should?

Practices to enhance your experiences: Savor.  Slow down.  Focus on and appreciate the little details.

Goals

Set meaningful goals.  It’s essential to living a fulfilling life.  While not everyone has the interest or ability to run, I have received a huge amount of fulfillment from accomplishing some of my running goals.  As I ran across the finish line of my first marathon, I broke down in tears.  I was overcome with joy and gratitude (and, yes, pain) for having accomplished a goal that I had been working towards for more than a year.

Reflection questions:  What are important goals that I want to accomplish this year?  The next 5 or 10 years Before I die?  How can I work toward those?

Practices to enhance goal success: Set meaningful goals.  Break down tasks into S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound).  Celebrate not just the achievement of goals but also progress. Set goals together.  Have kids? Friends with similar interests?  Maybe you could set meaningful goals about spending a certain amount of time together, building/making/doing something together, going on a big trip together, etc.  Don’t compare your goals to other people.  You are the only true measure of your success.

Personal Growth

This is, admittedly, a subcategory of ‘goals.’  With that acknowledgement in mind, it is still worthy of its own category because of both its importance and breadth.  We stop fully living as humans when we stop reaching to become better, smarter, more loving, more generous, more alive people.  This is the ultimate quest and fundamental story line of every hero epic - to slay the dragons within and to obtain peace and enlightenment.

Reflection questions: How have I grown over time?  What progress have I made?  What are areas of my life that I need to grown in?  What are reasonable, accomplish-able goals that I can set for myself in this arena? (It’s important to not be overly self-critical here.)

Practices to enhance personal growth:  Choose who you want to be first and then make action decisions in line with who you want to be. Spend time around people you look up to.  Build routines into your life that foster growth.

Supplemental resources:

• Video of UUCT parishioners talking about how they add meaning to their life.
• Survey that tests what you think the meaning of life is (as with personal tests, this test can help us understand and relate to others better, particularly those who may view life differently).

My Friend

by Warren Brackmann

I have a really cool friend I’d like to tell you about.  He’s the type of friend any good person would love to have.  He is an “up” person; a positive person.  He approaches life in a positive manner and with courage.  Problems and issues tend to be viewed as a challenge and are solved or resolved in a positive manner.

He is very ordered.  One might say he is obsessive about it, but that someone wouldn't be standing in my friend’s shoes.  They might like it if they could.  He is fair and wants everyone to have a fair shake.  Again to an appropriate obsession, he endlessly and fervently devises schemes and processes that address many issues or moral dilemmas facing our society, environment and lives.

He cares, loves and hopes.  He cares about people, their feelings and well being, and he cares about the earth.  He advocates love as well as rationality.  He has hope!  In this world headed towards doom, he has hope!  I find this amazing because I do not have hope for this planet.  I think things have gone too far.  There are just too many issues that affect our planet that need solutions.  I think the solutions will not happen in time.  But HE has hope.

My friend is logical to a tee in his approach to everything.  He is not always right, but it is difficult to refute his logic and one might have to get used to his rationality and almost flawless logic.  I've seen him in heated arguments. He never gets mad and is very respectful to his opponent.  He listens carefully.  He has an open mind and is ready to consider and analyze any opinion or hypothesis.

He is kind and non-judgmental.  He is kind in his discussions or academic arguments (or any arguments for that matter).  He is kind and respectful in the manner in which he addresses his fellow person, and is non-judgmental in thought and approach.

He is a giving person.  He gives of himself and he gives his resources.  He thinks.  Man, does he think!  His philosophies and opinions are well thought out.  His Humanistic philosophy keeps him pretty busy.  He is a successful influencer with integrity.  He uses his fine traits to influence and lobby for good.

Yes, his opinions, thoughts and methods are liberal, which the less-liberal or conservative might find threatening, but they are logically thought out and usually address the betterment of mankind and the planet.

On the home front he is a wonderful loving and supportive husband and father.  He is no stranger to personal strife and emotional pain either.  For that alone I find him courageous.

My friend is ethical and moral.  He is also a Freethinker, pretty much like a Freethinker is defined:  One who forms his own opinions about important subjects (such as religion, politics and justice) instead of accepting what other people say.  One who forms opinions on the basis of reason independent of authority; especially, one who doubts or denies religious dogma.

Wikipedia defines Freethought as a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or other dogmas.

Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or the intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, Freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena.

Many find these qualities and principles admirable, even those whose beliefs are religious and who conceive of a God.  I've observed that the methods used by freethinkers to promote their philosophies and opinions vary from person to person, and organization to organization.  One may choose to come from a negative point of view and attack, as opposed to challenge and debate those whose beliefs are different than their own.  I would call such attacks religion or God bashing.  I believe they are judgmental.  But not all Freethinkers or Freethinker organizations are negative.  They do not believe Freethinker philosophies should be shoved down other’s throats.  Rather, being a Freethinker gives one an opportunity to look at the world as a real world with real people that deserve respectful and non-judgmental treatment.

My friend regularly attends Freethinkers meetings.  Many of the people who attend these discussion groups have similar qualities.  They care.  They observe, analyze, collaborate, philosophize and discuss many topics.  Freethinkers consider and discuss many topics of which religion and God are just one.  I've been to meetings and programs with topics such as, “Reforming Our Democracy,” "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars," “The JFK Assassination: 50th Anniversary,” “Thom Hartmann: The Boston Tea Party Revealed,” Clips of George Carlin, “The People vs. Larry Flint,” “Dr. Jeanette Narden: Understanding the Brain,” and many more programs that have nothing to do with God or religion.

Of course, not all Freethinkers have the exemplary integrity and moral fiber my friend has, but more than not have similar ideals and attitudes.  From my perspective, although somewhat bias, I find Freethinkers tend to be non-abrasive and friendly.  They do not necessarily proselytize.  In fact, I've never observed such coercion in my association with Freethinkers.  I am extremely fortunate to have comrades such my friend and the majority of Freethinkers I meet.  I find the associations stimulating and up lifting.

You are a Mirror of Eternity

By Bob Deyle

You are a mirror of eternity! What an empowering assertion. What a marvelous embodiment of Universalism. What a call to community.

Elizabeth Andrew, author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir, encourages each of us to share the stories of our personal spiritual experience: the grand questions with which we have wrestled, the wonder and awe that have filled us, the pain and suffering we have endured, the compassion we have expressed, the hope we have cultivated, and the glimpses of truth we have beheld.

Each of us has a story of inherent worth.
Each of us is the world and the heavens boiled down to a single drop.
Each of us is a concentrated universe made of stardust from the Big Bang.
Your pain taps the world's suffering.
Your loneliness reveals creation's drive for connection.
You are a mirror of eternity.

How empowering to be told that your personal spiritual experience is inherently worthy and true. Someone else does not assign worth and truth to our religious experiences. They are our own. William James, writing specifically about personal mystical experiences, asserts in his Varieties of Religious Experience that such experiences "have the right to be . . . absolutely authoritative over the individual to whom they come." He argues that each of us should be the sole judge of the value of our personal religious experiences based on their "immediate luminousness, . . . philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness."

Elizabeth Andrew's assertions bring to mind former UU minister Forrest Church's metaphor for Universalist theology, "The Cathedral of the World," which he first described in Our Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism (1989), co-authored with John Buehrens. Church invokes the metaphor of a cathedral that embodies the whole of human religious experience, the windows of which offer unique illuminations of the mystery of existence. At one level, we can take the metaphor to represent the diverse religions of the world and the many individual sources of religious inspiration they have produced. But at another level, following Elizabeth Andrew's vision of individual universality, each of us is a window in the Cathedral of the World. In Church's words, "Each in its own way is beautiful. . . . Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death."

None of us will ever see the Whole or be able to claim to know the Truth. We cannot insist that someone else accept the insights we form from our personal spiritual experience. Yet we should want to listen, with a willingness to be transformed, to each other's stories, because each of us is, in some way, a mirror of eternity.

Let the Moon Shine

By the Rev. Robin Gray
Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee

In the Dhammapada, it is written: “Whoever, by good deed, covers the evil done, such a one illumines the world like the moon freed from clouds.”

I love this positive image. Think of the moon, slipping along the sky on a raft of light, yet obscured by the dark clouds which allow only the slimmest rays to escape at their outer edges. The clouds are lit from behind by the moon, but all we can see is the seemingly impenetrable face of the clouds. Just so, evil takes precedence on the human horizon as well.

Keeping your face to the clouds, you now see them slide to the right of the sky vault and with increasing fervor the light of the moon overcomes the sky. The difference between darkness and the sky under moon glow is quite distinct. You would not readily confuse the sky at its darkest with the sky draped in moonlight. The change proceeds silently, swiftly and surely.

Likewise I can imagine our good deeds rolling from under a cover of evil and casting a new light on a scene so vast the good deeds themselves are dwarfed by it. Evil still exists. It has the potential to darken the world again, but our world is transformed by loving deeds emanating light.

I invite you then to take this image with you into the new year, to make use of it in your meditations and in your daydreams when you imagine the good deeds you can do.

No matter how small the deeds that are within your ken, remember the illumination of the moon and how many shades of light there are even in the darkest night.  Let the moon shine through your actions; dispel evil with all the good that lies within you.

The Christmas Menorah

By Kristen Coyne

My daughter, now 13, has been raised a Unitarian Universalist since the age of 4. I’ve watched UUCT shape her, support her and challenge her in many ways over the years. This holiday season brings to mind one of my favorite “UU” stories about Omie that I think illustrates so many of the wonderful things about our faith. Let’s call it, “The Christmas Menorah.”

It was December 26, 2006, and the booty of the previous day was still piled on the living room couch. We were cleaning up the yuletide detritus—my husband, Sean, vacuuming up Christmas tree needles, Omie pulling out the skirt from beneath the tree to shake outside —when Omie gasped in surprise.

“Momma, momma!” she cried. “There’s another present under—and it’s from Santa!”

Clad in her new robe and pajamas, she hugged a box wrapped in red to her chest. She didn’t need to read the tag to know it was from Santa. She recognized the wrapping as the paper Santa had used on his presents that year.

“Oh, my goodness,” I exclaimed. “Where did that come from?”

It had been lost under the tree, she explained; she discovered it while cleaning. After studying the words penned in Santa’s distinctive block script on the tag —“To Omie, Love Santa. Ho, Ho, Ho!”— She tore off the wrapping to reveal a blue and white box bearing a photo of the familiar holiday item contained inside.

“It’s a menorah!” she shouted, more thrilled than she’d been at any point the day before. “Thank you, Santa. You’re the greatest!”

My husband and I are not Jewish, although I can claim a bit of Jewish creed: I worked on an Israeli kibbutz for half a year; my Irish surname is sometimes mispronounced as Cohen; and, of course, Judaism is part of the religious smorgasbord we’re exposed to at UUCT. Still, none of this quite qualifies us as Jews. My husband comes from Irish Catholic stock and I from Norwegian Lutherans.

However, sometime during her sixth year, Omie had decided that she was Jewish.

I cannot say where this conviction came from. Perhaps from our laid-back attitude about faith at home, or from the time in kindergarten when she ate scrumptious latkes fried up by a classmate’s mom. Or maybe it dated to a lesson about the Jewish festival of Sukkot one Sunday at UUCT. She informed her teachers that day that she had made a sukkah (a kind of temporary hut constructed to celebrate the fall holiday) at home and that she was Jewish, responding indignantly when classmates doubted the claim.

Not that my child’s newfound Jewish identity was going to interfere with her Christmas that year. Early in December she had made out her wish list: Polly Pocket dolls, a Chinese outfit, a locket, a robe, pajamas, and a bow and arrow.

This list notwithstanding, Omie had begun to suspect that there actually was no Santa. “Dad,” she asked the week before the holiday, “Tell me the truth. Do you buy all the presents?”

“No, I don’t buy all the presents,” Sean answered, managing to tell the truth and preserve Santa’s cover at the same time. Omie seemed reassured and dropped the matter.

Two days before Christmas, as an exercise in spelling and penmanship, I suggested our daughter write an actual letter to Santa. I promised I would mail the letter from the post office that day and that it would reach Santa before he left on his Christmas Eve journey. She composed her note at the kitchen table, folded it up, and slid it into an envelope addressed to Santa at the North Pool.

The missive was short, sweet and entirely different from the one that had been posted on the fridge for weeks. She asked that Santa help the poor, and kindly included a plug for mom, who wanted a new pair of bike shoes. For herself, Omie requested just three things: a dolphin purse (the same one Santa had given her several years earlier, which had been missing for months), a dreidel and a menorah.

My heart sank: There was no way Omie would receive any of these items. Replacing the unique purse purchased years earlier was impossible. The dreidel was a definite no: I had bought her one a few weeks earlier which she had promptly lost, a carelessness I could not allow even Santa to reward. And a menorah! The prospect of finding a menorah after Hanukkah had ended in a small southern city with a modest Jewish population was not promising. Besides, I had finished my shopping and, on a tight Christmas budget, did not want to buy anything else. There was no time left for shopping, anyway; we were busy preparing for UUCT’s Christmas Eve pageant, in which my daughter had a part as an angel.

The pageant was a delight, populated by cute, little shepherds, glittery white angels sporting butterfly wings and a beautiful Mary. As a golden star dangled from the end of a bamboo pole above a manger, we listened to the story of Jesus’ birth. We sang familiar carols and lit candles in the darkened sanctuary.

Omie told in song the story of the role that angels play in the nativity:

“If I were an angel with halo so bright,
I’d light up your way,
I’d journey with you through the dark of the night
‘Til sun delivers the day”

The minister praised the beauty, depth and mystery of the nativity story. Many in the audience might not believe in it literally, she said, but the story gave us much to reflect about and in that wonder, she explained, was great power.

 “Santa came, Santa came!” Omie pounced on me with her news early the next morning, pointing to the proof: presents under the tree, the stockings stuffed, crumbs and an empty glass where milk and cookies had been put out the night before. Omie opened her packages—the straw Chinese hat, softball glove and bow and arrow from Santa, the Barbie laptop from Aunt Katie, the Walkman and socks from Mom and Dad, the cooking set from Grandma.

She was happy with everything. We passed the morning learning to operate the electronics and playing catch in the yard.

But something was nagging at Omie. “Dad,” she asked later in the day, “did you buy the presents?”   My husband hesitated, teetering between fact and myth, unsure which was right.

“Of course he didn't buy the presents,” I interjected before he had a chance to spill the beans. “Santa brought the presents.” My tone made clear the matter was to be dropped.

Part of my daughter did not believe. But another part needed very much to, and fought to quiet the doubter in her.

But as the day went on, the facts lay cruel siege to her imagination. She learned during a phone call to her aunt overseas that Santa had skipped her home in Indonesia. When Omie visited her grandparents that afternoon, she discovered Santa hadn’t been there, either. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t fair. Beginning to feel like Santa’s apologist, I came up with what I thought was a pretty convincing explanation.

“Santa is for the kids,” I told her. “Grown-ups can buy what they want anytime. But kids can’t. So Santa is special—just for kids.”

She seemed to find the explanation plausible—but just barely. As I tucked her in later that night, Omie seemed exasperated, weary. “I just don’t understand Christmas,” she sighed.

What else could I say? How could I tell her the truth, yet preserve Santa and all the good he represents for at least another year? I decided to borrow from what our minister had said during the pageant the night before.

“Christmas is a mystery,” I told her. “Santa is a mystery. No one knows for sure what it’s all about—no one can explain it. It gives you lots to think about, to wonder about, to explore in your mind and in your heart. Sort of like angels.”

I did not personally believe there were angels flying around with wings, in the way she had been outfitted the night before, I told Omie. But there were times in my life when strangers had intervened to save me—once on a cold, wet evening when I was hopelessly lost on a trek in the Japanese Alps, another time when I was stranded on a dark highway. Surely these people were angels. She, too, was an angel in my life, I told my daughter. She had brought me great joy; she was full of mystery.

This made her beam: At last an explanation that made sense, that rang true, that quieted her mind enough, at least, for her to fall asleep.

I cannot say why I needed my daughter to believe in Santa a while longer, to believe in the kindness and giving and hope that she clearly saw in that figure. But I did. And I believed she did, too.

Which is why, the next morning, after she and her father were safely out of the house, I began my quest for a Christmas menorah.

First I drove to a small specialty shop that I knew sold them, but they were closed. Back at home, I pulled out the phone book. Not surprisingly, the “Judaica” category did not exist. I tried calling a store that sold international merchandise: No, they hadn't any menorahs this year. Next I phoned a department store: They had had some earlier in the season but had long since sold out. The nice lady I talked to suggested the grocery story. An unlikely source, I thought, but worth a final phone call.

Bingo: The manager reported they had one menorah left, mixed in among the Christmas clearance stuff.

I was there in minutes. The menorah was not exactly the noble-looking candelabra I had envisioned, a silvery accessory featuring fine, tapered candles.  Instead I held a Deluxe Chanukah Electric Menorah, a white, plastic, made-in-China affair that came complete with nine royal blue 120-volt light bulbs.

Nevertheless, I was clutching what was very likely the last 2006 menorah available in all of Tallahassee.  So I happily parted with nine dollars on the half-off merchandise, rushed it home, wrapped it in Santa’s red “Merry Christmas” paper and slid it discreetly underneath the green sheet coiled around the base of our tree.

Later that night, as I assembled the pieces together, I professed consternation over how we could have overlooked the present on Christmas Day. Omie screwed in each of the nine blue bulbs, explaining to her father how the middle candle, the one perched atop the Star of David, was the servant candle, used to light each of the others over the course of Hanukkah’s eight days.

We placed the menorah and plugged it in. Omie scurried to turn off all the lights, including those of our Christmas tree, and the three of us sat in the glow of the nine electric candles. Gazing up at it in beatitude, Omie mooned, “Santa, you’re the greatest!”

By the light of our fire and that menorah, I read aloud to Omie before it was time to brush teeth and get in bed. Our daughter protested, as usual, but quickly turned obedient when reminded Santa was watching.

I brought the menorah to her room and found a home for it on her dresser. I loosened all but the servant candle, to serve as Omie’s nightlight. Shining above the Star of David, it filled the room with a magical blue aura. After tucking my girl in, I turned and saw that candle number No. 6 had lit itself back up; Omie and I gave each other a knowing smile, and I returned to the dresser to unscrew it again.

Snuggling in her bed, we stared for a while at the mysterious menorah, at Santa’s wonderful gift. Then Omie burst into song, picking it up mid-carol, and I joined her:

Star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light.

We sang it twice. She begged for more stories of angels, but it was late and time to sleep. Preferring, as is her habit, to sleep in total darkness, she asked me to turn off the menorah for the night, which I did before bidding her sweet dreams.

Later that evening, before turning in myself, I went down to check on her. I found the servant candle shining brightly over a soundly sleeping child. It was a thing of profound beauty and mystery.

The Love We Seek

By Rev. Robin Gray
Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee

The Jain prays: “Forgive do I creatures all, and let all creatures forgive me. Unto all have I amity, and unto none enmity.”  Short phrases, made no less profound by their brevity. Phrases borrowed from a religious tradition begun in India, and no less pertinent in our lives as the great winter of waiting begins on the American continent.

Time and again, scriptures and sages from around the globe remind us that our essential goal in life must be to create amity — the harmony that rests on a foundation of peace and loving kindness. We listen and we know that that harmony will paint a brighter future for humanity. We listen to the admonitions, and sometimes we hear, how very important it is to our personal growth as spiritual and physical beings to develop the capacities for all-encompassing love.

Still the goal eludes the vast majority of us. A dedicated few, some call them saints, move beyond the masses and their love is legendary. The rest of us find ourselves caught up in the fear that pits nation against nation, and creates foes from friends. Wars waged and terrors committed in the name of religious purity shout down the quiet prayers of those who wish only to promote the Spirit of Peace.

The deep knowledge we have about the way life should be is tangled in the surface activities that divide us from the love we seek. Yet the fact that the goal lies beyond us still is hardly reason to abandon the search, and those same scriptures and sages recall us to a renewed dedication.

This, for me, is a part of the holy quest of Christmas and the sacred cycle of the seasons. If ever the angels did sing, “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All,” they sing it still for me. If the sun shines with rays of hope and gives to life her all, then I can do no less in return. 

Take time this season to bring make love and harmony a part of your daily care and concern. Let yourself  be reminded of the greater goal that needs our attention in every season of the year.

How to “See the Best” in People: The Hard Way

By Anna Bethea
UUCT Director of Religious Exploration

I’ve heard often that I see the best in people.  Maybe you’ve been told the same, or know someone who fits this common description.  I think it’s a nice compliment, but it’s never felt quite right to me.  One reason is that this trait is often associated with being more prone to getting hoodwinked by others and having a general sense of naivety. 

I  admit that, at times, I can be quite carefree and gullible.  But in important matters, I feel confident in my intelligence to weigh risks and make wise choices.  In short, I don’t like being dismissed for seeing through rose-colored lenses or for having Pollyanna thoughts.
However, the biggest reason this attribution doesn’t sit right with me is that I think I probably have just as many judgmental and unkind thoughts about others as the next person.

At the risk of exposing myself as insensitive, I admit:  I often wonder why people are so lazy, stupid, or can’t get their act together.  I make assumptions about others before I know the whole story.  I have, at times, even held myself above others and felt that I’m better than them.  These are not consistent with the traits of someone who “sees the best” in people.

There may be others with temperaments more suited to having naturally kind thoughts about others, but my approach is actually quite the opposite.  Instead of seeing the best in others, I relate to the worst in them.  In their thoughtless actions, I see the many silly mistakes of my own life.  In their arrogance, I see my own tendency to see myself as righteous and virtuous.  In their flusteredness, I see the moments when I’ve felt overwhelmed and inadequate.

It’s not the simplest of practices.  It’s quite difficult for some of us to be able to chip away at our own egos.  But once we start, we begin to see that what’s keeping us separated from others is not their actions or their differences.  It’s our own inability to see them as human beings¬—as us.  In order to see the best in others, we have to be willing to see the worst in ourselves.  It’s a scary endeavor, fraught with self-doubt and loathing. 

Unpleasant as it may be, this paradoxical practice provides an opening for true compassion for ourselves.  Once we can truly see and accept ourselves¬—warts and all¬—we can start to extend this more readily to others.

Recognize yourself in others.