We cannot know another in a few moments.

Even when we know someone, we cannot say this is everything this person will be.

We have a lifetime in which to become all we can be.  Often the best of what we can be we fall into; we react, and respond, and preact to life around us which comes to us in the form of procreation and problems and people and policies.  We dance with the accidental.

As Richard Rohr closes his exploration of the second half of life he reflects on a poem from Trappist Thomas Merton.  These words most caught my attention:

“Be still
There is no longer any need for comment
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.”*

I make the journey from my small world, towards the edge, to look out into the bigger world of others and more, so I might leave my world and enter theirs, to gaze back upon myself and to see a bigger world from the perspective of another, until this becomes my new world.

Then I begin this journey again: ‘we are created to create.  In an ideal world, this creative energy is to be used to create the good and the beautiful and true.’**

How we see our lives will determine how we treat others.  Eckhart Tolle describes the person for whom lack (scarcity) has become part of who they are.  Each experience for this person is lack.  This is all they can give to others and see in others, but: ‘Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance.’^  Perhaps seeing the good in the lives of others is a place to begin?

‘If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people.’^^

I’m not yet what I will finally be.  I must beware being judgemental, cynical, or fearful: this is the world I’ll create for others.  All I can do is pursue the good, the beautiful, and the true.

‘I can tell that there is an undeniable relationship between happiness and resilience.  People who enjoy life make life more enjoyable for others.**

(*Thomas Merton, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)
(^From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)
(^^From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)