to have a human heart
Recently, I've realized that my mouth isn't as clean as I want it to be. And by that, I mean I've been spreading negativity with my mouth.
I realize that when I trash-talk other people, I am not understanding their true emotions. Instead, I am judging and criticizing their surface-level behavior before even knowing the full picture.
When I talk poorly about people, I feel like I am talking poorly about myself. When I talk poorly about people, I subconsciously raise my expectations of others, unintentionally raising my expectations of myself. I feel that I am more unforgiving of myself because I am unforgiving of others. If I am able to accept myself, I have to accept others first.
I've reflected on why I speak poorly of people when someone irks me, and I think it's because I have an underlying emotion that is not being met. When I am tired, afraid, frustrated with my own life, angry, and sad, I tend to speak ill of others because I have so much pent-up emotion that cannot be released.
When I have no outlet to release that energy, I start to complain. I complain about this person who did this to me or this person who was mean to me at work or this thing happened to me and it was so unfair. When does it end? I will always have something negative to say about someone or something if I only focus on their shortcomings. And if I keep complaining, it will push people away from me. People never want to be drained by others' negativity. Humans naturally gravitate towards positive, uplifting, friendly people.
Instead of judging someone based on their surface-level behavior, I want to have more compassion for them. I want to understand their situation, see things from their point of view. Why are they acting the way they are? Why are they saying rude things to me? Why did they call me such a horrible name?
I want to use their negative actions or words to learn from them. I want to use it as an opportunity to learn, to be stronger and to remind myself not to act that way. Instead of taking it as an attack, I can use it as a learning lesson.
Instead of hating on people or sending negativity toward their way, I pray for them so maybe they can feel a bit better about the hardships they are going through in their life. Maybe it will alleviate a little bit of their suffering. Because if I keep sending negativity towards others, it will always find a way back to me, no matter how discreetly I say it behind their backs.
One thing I try to do is to focus on people's qualities instead of their downfalls. When I focus on someone's good traits, I find that it is easier for me to think of them as better people. Yes, the judgment and criticism is still there, but it's something I can practice to improve my interaction with others.
When I focus on the good in people, I can focus on the good in my life. The people I meet in my daily life and the people who surround me are in my life for a reason. Whether it is to teach me a lesson, to bring a smile to my face, to give me really good advice, to show me how not to act, I can learn from their life experiences and reflect back on my life.
Another thing I want to practice more is to solve real-life puzzles. And what I mean by this is digging deeper than what the eye sees.
I'll share a story where lead me to think about this idea:
It was a busy Saturday night and I was waiting in line at a gelato shop with my boyfriend. We see a young girl studying with her computer and notebook by one of the walls of the shop. We thought about how peculiar it was to study in an ice cream store on a loud Saturday night and how we would never do something like that because it seemed like a crazy and funny thing to do.
However, I started getting curious. And I realized, I could use this curiosity to understand her, dig a bit deeper, because the answer to why she was studying at an ice cream store on a Saturday night was worth a little thinking.
I started thinking that all the libraries would be closed by now and so would the coffee shops. I started wondering maybe her house was small or she had a loud family in a small house. Or maybe she worked a the icecream store and was on a break so she decided to study for a bit.
Regardless, the possibilities were endless which shows that judging and criticizing someone when you don't have the full picture is... well, uncool. It just shows that it is easy to fall into an assumption or judgment when your eye sees only one thing. Or maybe you've never had that experience before, and your assumptions are your fears trying to protect you. That gives you more of a reason to be curious about them, learn from them, and understand them.
But don't be fooled, your eyes can be extremely deceiving. But there are so many underlying factors to someone's behavior, someone's words, someone's actions.
To me, I think of it as a human puzzle, something worth using your curiosity for, something worth solving. Becuase if you take everything so surfaced level and let your emotions take over you....your life is going to be shitty.
I want to replace that with curiosity and understanding and compassion. But yeah, those are my thoughts and I'll leave it at that.
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