I think that if I could give the world one gift… one gift that would start to heal all of the pain and anger and hate… it would be the gift of empathy. I truly believe that empathy (and therefore kindness) is sorely lacking on this planet. Some have it… many do not.
The more we try to put ourselves in others’ shoes… the more we try to look at the world through the eyes of others (not through our interpretation of what we think they must be seeing/thinking), from the context of all the other person has experienced in their life… man, I just don’t think we’d have all of the hate. I really don’t. It’s easy to look down on others or to overlay our own experiences and our own agendas onto others and interpret their behavior, wants, needs, etc, through our own filter. It is a gazillion times harder to just stop and imagine how we might think, feel, behave and BE in the world if we had had all of the experiences, trauma, information, education, etc that they had… minus our own.
I challenge you to try this. I genuinely believe, that while people are born with varying degrees of empathic ability, empathy is actually a skill that mostly must be taught/learned.