‘The mind is never beyond redemption, for no environment can extinguish neorogenesis. […] neorogensis is cellular evidence that we evolved to never stop evolving.’*

‘Even though I’m beyond seventy now, new relationships still astound nee: I’ll meet a new person, and if I can interface with them honestly, trust them, allow them, refuse to categorise or too quickly label them – it will invariably open up inside me new realms of my being that I didn’t know existed until I was in relationship with them.’**

Instead of judging each other, how might it be possible to help one another thrive?

People may choose not to live their lives meaningfully in the same way as you or I define meaningful but at least they could know what humans are capable of – possibilities that are still growing and opening as we push back the borders of our unknowing.  Then it’s their choice.

Has everyone been given the same information about their amazing capacity to develop and thrive?  By their parents, their teachers, their friends, their co-workers and employers, their politicians, by their loving others?  Just to be able to know is to be given a better choice.

When we judge quickly – in seconds and minutes – the possibility of choice for another is diminished.  When we judge slowly – over years and decades and even a lifetime – then the possibility of choice is increased.

In his book Helping, Edgar Schein claims we’re sending out “testing signals” all the time, checking on whether these people we are meeting can be trusted, will they help us, what do they think of us?  When we miss these signals we can unknowingly close down possibilities of new realms of being – a little less information for people to make up their minds and hearts by, less information building up over time.

Obversely, when we remain open to one another when we try not to judge, allowing people to enter a new time of possibility.

(*From Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance.)