I don’t generally like the concept of a “New Years Resolution.” We don’t need a single day every year to evaluate our lives and strive to be better. That’s something we should be doing every day.
This year, though, timing just happens to put my need to evaluate things in line with the beginning of 2015. More than that, though; this year’s resolution is about the intersection between myself and the rest of the world. This year, I’m resolving to look for the best in people, in situations, and in the way I go about my daily life. And I’m encouraging anyone and everyone to join me.
Over the last several months, I’ve been confronted with the understanding that you never know what’s going on in someone else’s life. You don’t know what they’re thinking about just before they fall asleep. You don’t know what they’re dealing with in the darkest parts of their heart. You don’t know what another person’s challenges are. So how can you really judge a person based solely on what you see on the outside?
Patience is the virtue I struggle with most. I want things to operate according to a plan. More accurately, I want things to operate on MY plan. That isn’t the way the world works, though, and if I am going to be able to find any level of happiness, I need to be able to understand that. Patience with other people is even harder. Being patient means acknowledging that others are behaving in certain ways for reasons I may not understand. Being patient requires me to take a step back and realize that I may not know everything, and that sometimes that just has to be ok.
We need to be more patient with one another. The world is filled with pains and hardships. Airplanes fall out of the sky, orphaning children and widowing lovers. Disease takes not only the life but livelihood away from the strong. Natural disasters test the very foundations upon which we build our lives. These are all easy to see, blatantly in need of the combating of fear that caring, support, and love provide.
But everyone is going through something, no matter how significant or insignificant it may feel in comparison to the plight of others. We don’t need to belittle our feelings by saying that there’s somebody suffering more than we are. You are allowed to be disappointed by your shortcomings. You are allowed to mourn the ending of a relationship. You are allowed to feel doubt about your future. And we, as people interacting every day, need to give you the freedom to deal with those hardships without adding judgement, frustration or impatience to the mix.
The hardest thing in the world is emotional honesty. Emotional honesty means accepting how you feel and being willing to tell someone else, to communicate to another person that you are going through something. Sometimes it’s to tell someone you’re hurting. Sometimes it’s to tell someone you love them. No matter what it is, it takes incredible strength simply to know WHAT you’re feeling and THEN be willing to share that deep part of yourself. Yet, when we are most healthy as people, when we are most likely to be truly happy, is when we are able to accomplish this. There is no better feeling in the world than knowing that someone else in the world knows how you’re feeling, and can support you when you can’t carry your burden any more.
I want to be more emotionally honest. I want to be more supportive of those who are emotionally honest with me. And, maybe the greatest challenge for me, I want to be patient with those who haven’t found the time or the courage to tell me what they’re going through, so that I can make their road to emotional honesty and, eventually, happiness all the easier.
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