The previous post feels like I over complicated a really simple concept, so here’s my second attempt at clarifying it.
It’s really as simple as this. If you wish to understand someone, look behind their eyes, or their actions, and embrace the vulnerability that is required to see in them what you know to be true of yourself. If you see them angry, remember when you were angry in a similar context in your own life. Then seek to understand yourself in that moment, so that you can establish a basis on which to understand them, or at the least, attempt to.
When we take this approach we benefit in two ways. Firstly, we stand a better chance of understanding them and therefore being able to meaningfully engage with them. Secondly, it allows you to benefit others from the struggles of your life, instead of just feeling as if it was a personal growth cycle and nothing more.
If life is really too short to make all your own mistakes, and I believe this to be true, then the only way to live more than you otherwise would have would be to avoid pitfalls by learning from others. But that has to be reciprocal in a healthy society. So the more you hold on to the insecurity of others seeing your flaws and using it as a basis to judge you poorly, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to either learn from them, or allow them to grow from your experiences. Why would it prevent you from learning from them? Simple, the more you protect yourself from being discovered as a whole person with warts and all, the more you’re inclined to believe that your personal struggles are so unique that no one could possibly understand them.
So the more you allow yourself to open up, the more you’ll realise that in opening up, you actually solicit sources of wisdom that benefit you, rather than weaken you. You’ll also reveal a side of your humanness that will attract the compassionate and tender-hearted ones that you most likely wish to embrace in your personal space. But none of it is possible if you keep everyone at arm’s length because of the mistaken belief that your weaknesses are not shared by others.
We’re all so great at putting up facades that we’ve even convinced ourselves that no one else has them. Like I’ve always said, your assumptions about others are a true reflection of yourself, rather than them. However, such a reflection is inversely proportional to the reality of your self-image. So chances are that those that judge themselves to be weak assume that others are stronger, while those that embrace their weakness, see others as equally flawed, but not necessarily weak. I guess this is one time when the mirror cannot be trusted, because the eyes always filter what the heart needs to feel. Unless we stop to test the assumptions that the eyes make, our hearts will always be nourished by a tainted diet of reality.