Where do we have shared humanity and common ground? Recognizing their humanity, understanding them, and perhaps even having an open heart doesn’t mean we have to forgive someone or let them into our life. It means we are acknowledging them as a human being.

We can build this muscle by working with our own inner critic and with difficult people in our own life. Everyone has a backstory. How is that operating in your relationships?

I can tolerate disappointing people

What happened in your body as you read these words? I felt a heaviness in my chest. I took a deep in breath and a long exhale and softened my neck and shoulders.

Two months ago I made a big decision. I had been thinking about it for awhile.

We can spend our entire live betraying ourself and choosing fitting in over standing alone. But once we’ve stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.” Brené Brown

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. We can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts.”

When we feel threatened and go into a survival response, we strike out for protection. We don’t actually want to make it worse, but this is a hard pattern to avoid.

Pema has a suggestion. “We wonder how other people are doing and reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.”

Why do we minimize our own trauma?

We compare and see our trauma as less than other people’s

Why do we compare and try to one-up other people’s trauma?

We don’t want to believe it could happen to us so we blame them

Why do other people dismiss us?

I’ve been meditating for 29 years. I remember reading that about people and thinking wow! What would that be like? I was sure that after meditating so long, people would be peaceful all the time. It turns out that’s mostly true! Meditation changes our mind.

“I have come to believe that behind the entire epidemic of chronic afflictions, mental and physical, that beset our current moment, something is amiss in our culture itself, generating both the rash of ailments we are suffering and crucially, the ideological blind spots that keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives. Chronic illness is not a glitch, it is a consequence of how we live.” Gabor Maté, MD

If we want a just world, we have to fight for it. We are not personally responsible for systemic racism, colonialism, the patriarchy, and oppression. No one person is responsible for this system. We are each responsible for understanding, grappling with the complexity, and taking action now. Seeing and speaking truth in community changes us. When we do, it changes the world.

I was raised to be racist. I was eleven and had just purchased We Shall Overcome, a songbook from the US Civil Rights movement. I brought it with me on a visit to my mom’s parents farm. I vaguely remember her discouraging me from bringing it. It would have been better if she had outright told me no, but then she would have had to tell me why.

Everyone these days knows about “the gays”. When I was a kid growing up in a small prairie town in western Canada, I had no idea. I didn’t know that a male friend who curled his hair and wore makeup was gay. I didn’t know what to make of the interest I had in kissing a girlfriend. Although there are limits to labels and real damage done by contempt and shaming, visibility at least lets us know about possibilities.

Objectification is when we use another person as a way to fill our needs. This isn’t the interaction with others that happens all the time. We are lonely, call a friend and feel better just by feeling understood. They do the same.