Compassion Requires Accepting Our Differences

 

As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect
the uniqueness of others.
- Robert H. Schuller

Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.
- M. Scott Peck

It is not our differences that divide us.
It is our inability to recognize, accept,
and celebrate those differences.
- Audre Lorde

You never really understand a person
until you consider things from his point of view.
- Harper Lee

Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.
- Theodor Adorno

When we have expectations (demands), we think we know how people SHOULD behave, and we can have no compassion. Only after we accept that another person's uniquely "right" path does not follow our own preconceptions, can we be compassionate.

The essence of compassion is accepting others as unique individuals,
without believing that they are less good for not being carbon copies of ourselves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Condemn None

Empathy

Understanding

Signs of a Compassionate Person

Do What You Can
     

Resist the Temptation to Judge Others

 

Judge not, that you be not judged.
For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged;
and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
- Matthew 7:1-2

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed
by the defects of those with whom we associate.
- Francois Fenelon

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely
as small as what you allow to annoy you.
- Robert Anton Wilson

Today's affirmation:
I Resist the Temptation to Judge Others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Essence of Jesus' Teaching

Love All, Judge None

The Price of Anger

Keep the Golden Rule
   

Understanding is a Two-Way Street

 

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside
of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.
- Aeschylus

Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Philo

We are all different - and we are all one.
Take time to understand, and to appreciate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Before you criticize anyone,
walk a mile in their shoes.
- Anonymous [gender-neutral update]

The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Understanding is a two-way street.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

We will never have true civilization until we have
learned to recognize the rights of others.
- Will Rogers

When the rights of any group, no matter how small, no matter how marginal,
are violated, your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers

Further reading: The Art of Listening

Opportunity for Kindness

Of all the keys to happiness, Service to Others is the big one

Open Your Mind
      

Focus on Asking the Right QUESTIONS

 

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm Forbes

The function of education is to teach one
to think intensively and to think critically.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
- Margaret Mead

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts
but the training of the mind to think.
- Albert Einstein

The wise man doesn't give the right answers,
he poses the right questions.
- Claude Levi-Strauss

The principle goal of education in the schools
should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things,
not simply repeating what other generations have done.
- Jean Piaget

Further reading: Our Future is the World's Children

Welfare of Our Children

The Nature of Learning

Teaching by Example
      

Look into Your Own Heart

 

Set Life’s Rhythm with Your Heart-Drum
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
- Confucius

You can choose to follow your heart always.
- don Miguel Ruiz

The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.
- The Buddha

Your visions will become clear only
when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.
- Carl Jung

March to the beat of your own drum.
- Proverb

Do what you feel in your heart to be right.
You'll be criticized anyway.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Further reading: Choose to Follow Your Heart

Choose Inner Peace

Live from Your Heart

Change Your Heart

The Beat of the Universe