Next time you get upset with someone you know, remember this quote from Aretha Franklin:
“You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’tt come off the way you thought it should come off.” Source: Aretha: Star’s Legacy Lives, Detroit Free Press (February 18, 2012)

How often in the heat of the moment do we decide someone is a jerk or a bozo or whatever it is you’ve labeled them? I’m just as guilty as others and maybe even more guilty. But in line with Aretha’s quote, I am trying to remember all the great things about that person especially if they are someone that I liked BEFORE they did that “stupid thing”. Can you think of it in that way? Why did you like them 12 hours ago?

We forget that everyone is human and that humans make mistakes. We also forget that it is WE who are deciding that what they did was a mistake or stupid. We really should then be asking ourselves – who the heck are we to make that decision and have it be the “gospel”? The other person may not even know that it’s something that offended you or would offend you. They can’t read minds any more than you can. You don’t know their motives. We are often so self oriented that we think that the other person SHOULD know what’s in our minds and what we like etc.. We also somehow think they should really care. Why? Why do we think that?

I have found (because of a program I’m in) that if I examine what it is that is p*ssing me off about someone, it’s often something I have been guilty of doing too. So how can I fault someone else. We are seeing ourselves mirrored in the lives of others. This is ok because as long as we keep the Windex handy (and use it, not just keep it in the bottle), then we can see what we don’t like in ourselves and hopefully change before we become the subject of another’s determination that we are a bozo. It’s not very comfortable to see that what I have been criticizing is what is in me but it’s something I have to see and change.

So for the second time this week, I have invoked the mirror concept..lol…that was not intentional but mirrors are for more than just seeing if we have food stuck in our teeth.