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Today's
quotation:
Human beings are human beings before they are
lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you
make them capable and sensible human beings, they will make themselves
capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
John Stuart Mill
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Today's
Meditation:
It
seems to be very easy for us to forget that first and
foremost, all day, every day, we are dealing with fellow
human beings in our day-to-day lives. One of the
great tragedies in life is to forget this fact, and thus
lose our opportunities to connect with other humans and
enrich our lives significantly.
After
all, all of the other humans with whom you come into
contact have lived their own lives up until this point,
learning their own lessons and figuring out their own
answers to their problems. They can offer us the
benefit of their experiences, and we can learn about
different ways of looking at the world and the lives we
live.
But
it's so easy for us to categorize, and once we do that,
people lose a bit of their humanity. It's easy in a
restaurant to think "This is my waitress," and
deal with her as some sort of order-taking machine.
On the other hand, if we were to think "This is
another human being who is working hard to meet her
responsibilities and commitments, someone who has a
different perspective on life that is no less valid than
mine," and treat this person as if she were a fellow
human being, our interaction with her could be much more
rewarding. It needn't reach the depths of a
friendship for it to be valuable to us, and while we may
not see the immediate value to us, it may prove to be very
valuable to the other person.
We're
all human beings. We all have thoughts, hopes,
dreams, ambitions, and desires, and we all need
recognition of our humanity. Isn't it about time
that we started giving that recognition regularly to the
other people in our lives?
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