I had a wonderful insight this morning. And it’s partially thanks to a particularly challenging person in my life right now.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I should treat people who are nasty, who are habitual liars, who are self absorbed, who are petulant, who are unkind to others, who are bullies, etc.
My first instinct is to stay as far away as I can, but when that isn’t possible then what? My next instinct is to judge them, condemn them, be unkind to them in return. And for people who lie and mistreat others those reactions are widely accepted by society. They deserve the harsh judgement. Their behaviour invites it.
But it struck me that there are people who view someone being obese as an invitation to ridicule. They may simply look down at them, they may make a quiet joke about them to a friend, or they may even go as far as yelling unkind things to them from across the street. Their fatness is unacceptable. They deserve it.
Still to this day, there are people who view physical or developmental disabilities as an invitation to treat someone as inferior, people who view mental health issues as an invitation to shame someone. Their condition is ugly. They deserve it.
Those last couple of examples are no longer widely accepted by society, but they are certainly, unfortunately, still accepted by a sizeable minority.
But whether society condones it is besides the point. Am I any different from someone who sees shortness in a man as an invitation to deride because I’ve chosen supposedly more “noble” criteria like being hateful, being inconsiderate, or being unkind to others? It is still X as an invitation to Y where X is some condition a person has chosen and Y is unkind, cold-hearted treatment they then get to act out against others. Because they deserve it.
X invites Y.
But what if I made my Y a constant? What if my Y was always love and compassion regardless of the other person’s X?
And of course, this does not mean I would allow others to treat me in a way that I don’t want to be treated. But even as I move away or make my boundaries clear I could be filled with love instead of anger, love instead of condemnation, love instead of retribution.
X invites LOVE. Can I do it? I don’t know, but I’m going to try.