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Today's
Meditation:
This is
something that I've always felt to be true, and the main
reason that arrogant people don't bother me too
much. No matter what they say to me to try to make
me feel less than I am, if I keep in mind that they're
trying to make me feel like they feel inside, then it's
hard to get mad at them. They're dealing with their
own demons-- themselves, mostly-- and externalizing their
fears rather than internalizing them.
When
we think about where different behaviors and attitudes
come from, it becomes pretty easy to be forgiving.
So many of the rude things that people do originate in
fear and anxiety; so much greed is also the result of
fear; and arrogance, too, results from insecurities and
fear, and not from a true feeling of being superior to
others. Arrogant people are hurting. Their masquerade of an air of superiority is
simply a smokescreen that they hope will keep us from
seeing just how insecure they really are.
Some
people, of course, truly do believe that they're better
than anyone else, and that has to come from having learned
it somewhere. Perhaps a parent went a bit too far in
trying to build their self-confidence. Maybe they
were successful in many things while growing up, and that
caused them to develop arrogance instead of
confidence. I think that in certain situations, any
of us could be guilty of arrogance, especially when we're
around people whom we see as being inferior to us in some
way. Any time that we put ourselves above another
human being, we run the risk of thinking arrogantly and
unfairly.
Arrogance
really is unfair, after all. It's the result of
judging others and finding them to be lacking in
particular ways that we feel we're better in. We
can't go judging ourselves harshly every time certain
thoughts come up, but we really should take stock now and
then when we find ourselves feeling that we're better than
someone else, for it's in just those times that we're
truly close to arrogance ourselves, and that's a bridge
that we want to cross as rarely as possible-- if ever.
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