Sunday, August 25, 2013

Mystery... and Kindness

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
Charles Dickens

One of the Kindness Muses wrote to me this week about my post on curiosity.  She shared that it made her think of a phrase that she heard from a Jesuit priest in Washington, D.C. more than 20 years ago:  "People are not problems; people are mysteries."

"This lifts me out of whatever negative thoughts I am having about a person and makes me look at the person and the situation in a whole new way, with wonder and (perhaps) delight," my friend said.  "It's looking with a sense of wonder and adventure and possibility and openness, instead of negativity and closed-ness."

If we are open to the mystery of others, we can let go of having to understand them or fix them.  Instead, we can simply open our hearts and show them kindness.

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