Be easy on others. Don’t be so hard on them. Yes, you see their errors so easily. It’s true, they don’t see their own. They see yours.
One of your errors has been to dismiss others as of no consequence to you or to the world. They are not your cup of tea. In your mind, it may be you can’t abide them, for they rub you the wrong way.
That is your error, not theirs. You are the one rubbed the wrong way. You are the one irritated.
You may have tried everything you know to unruffle your feathers, and you are not doing so well.
I have a question to ask you, ruffled one. What is there that you can’t let go of? If you keep the rufflement, there is something that you are holding dear to you. Is it that you are right? Let Us grant that. You are right. Your perception is right. Must you hold it against others or another that your assessment is correct? Okay, they are flawed human beings, and so are you.
You may think you are a forgiving person, and yet your position in regard to someone who is not easy for you to tolerate has become vital to you. Dear child, so what if you are right? Small comfort in that. To your dying day, you may be right.
Adhere yourself to your own standards, beloved.
Another person is one thing, and you are another. I am talking to you right now and what is best for you. I am representing you and not the other. This other person is not what you would wish him or her to be. Nor, so far, are you able to be what would bring peace to you and the seeming other. Okay, the other person has no common sense. He makes no sense to you . He is all the things you do not tolerate well. He is guilty of seeing life differently from you. Not only that, he thinks he knows all the answers. So?
Yet your ego says in one way or another: “Off with his head.”
Does the punishment fit the crime? Does a hardened heart mean more to you than letting go of judgment? What else is there for you to let go of?
Now don’t you start feeling guilty.
Let’s get to the heart of the matter. You don’t know how to deal with your feelings about this person. You don’t want to fake, and you don’t know how to be honest with this person either.
Sometimes life brings you these very people so you can overcome what is, after all, your own prejudice.
Beloved, people not as bright as you are people too! They don’t know they’re not so bright as you. They are equally as certain that they are smarter than you!
And, yet, this person may well seek to be in your good graces, and you can’t seem to admit him.
What you can do is to let go of the surliness you feel. You don’t have to take this person to your bosom, yet you can let go of your objections. Please remember, the objections are yours. They belong to you, not the other.
Life has conspired, has it not?
Think differently for a moment. You are not cellmates in prison. You are not sequestered with this person day and night.
Now, in contrast, does it still seem like such a big deal that you are sometimes in the same room!
Which one of you is dimmer than the other? The one who wants you to like him, or you, the one who is rankled?
Come, can you not smile at yourself and your pomposity? Come, get off your high horse. You do not have to like what you don’t like, and, yet, can you not rise in your own estimation?