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Today's
quotation:
It is a form of violence, to not see a being for who he or
she
really is. You think, "Oh, that's my son."
But the lens, "my
son, " completely obliterates
the multi-dimensions of that
being. Maybe you only see
your disappointments in that child,
or you aspirations for
that child, but that's not the child.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Today's
Meditation:
Labels
aren't exactly a positive thing--in fact, they can be very
damaging to us. We use them all the time to provide
ourselves with a certain level of comfort that comes from
"knowing" about something, as the unknown tends
to frighten us a bit, or at least make us a bit
uncomfortable.
But
as soon as we label something, it loses its
uniqueness. If I see a 65-year-old man on the street
and consider him to be "an old man," I
immediately attribute to him my idea of what an old
man is. And my idea definitely is not valid for
anyone, for it's been developed over the years as a
composite idea based on people of that age whom I've
known.
But
what kinds of thoughts does this man think? Who are
the people who love him, and what do they love most about
him? What kinds of challenges has he faced in his
life, and how has he overcome them? Whose lives has
he made easier? More difficult? What are his
greatest fears? Why?
We
label almost everyone we meet: boss, worker,
cashier, supervisor, housewife, son, daughter, neighbor,
pastor, police officer, teacher. And with those
labels come our ideas of what the people probably
are like. But when we do this we blind ourselves to
their true nature, and both of us lose out because we
never find it necessary to take the time to get to know
the person in a true fashion. There are few things
we can do in life to make others feel their value as
getting to know them, finding out more about them,
learning about who they are as human beings rather than
who we think they are.
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