When I heard President Barack Obama’s speech the other day after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, I felt so moved! Although, my approach is not political, part of his speech felt so in line with what I feel so strongly about in the psychological and spiritual realms.
President Obama said, “We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another. And that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.”
THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN BEINGS
I could not agree more. The essence of every human being is precious and more similar then we sometimes would like to think. From certain perspectives it is easy to focus on the differences that we have with others. Now, I’m not naïve. I know that we are different in many ways, but staying focused on the differences only keeps us viewing others as scary, dangerous, superior or inferior to us in some way.
President Obama went on to say, “We can’t accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for: the ability to get an education and make a decent living, the security that you won’t have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the fuure."
SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS
Many of the spiritual and religious teachings throughout the years urge us to treat others as our friends. The Bible tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. How come we forget this? How come we are so willing to stand in our own self-righteousness and not open our hearts to others, when all of the teachings tell us to open our hearts? I urge everyone, myself included, to look in the mirror, be honest with ourselves and notice how much or how little we make people into visions of humanity we can’t embrace.
Now, it would serve all of us well to experience and challenge our assumptions. Let’s continue challenging ourselves by asking the following questions: What are the beliefs, feelings, judgments, and ideas that keep us stuck in our self-righteousness? Do we sometimes continue seeing others as so very different that we can’t possibly understand that they have similar needs and feelings to us?
Please let me know how this goes for you. I look forward to reading your experiences and how you have been able to rise to this challenge and recognize this in yourself, however subtle this maybe for you.
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Posted: 10/13/2009 7:34:21 PM |
Part of the reason I supported and worked so hard for Barack Obama to be President is that he is someone who looks at how we are alike rather than how we are different.
All of us are more alike than we are different. No matter where you live, we are the same. We are born. We die. We get married. We have kids. We want a better world for our kids. We want to make the world a better place. We are touched by kindness and angered by injustice.
We need oxygen to breathe and water to drink. We are sometimes happy and sometimes sad. We laugh. We cry. We want to be happy more often than we are sad.
No matter where we live we are the same. The things that unite us are much greater than the things the separate us. Many of us tend to see one difference (gender, skin color, nationality, language, religion) with another person and assume that that person is a lesser person because of that small difference.
Let''s try to see our similarities more than differences.
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| Shawnee
Posted: 5/3/2010 1:57:32 PM |
It is remarkable, rather valuable phrase |
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