Seeing the Good in Others
Children, devotion to God is not only expressed through rituals or worship. It must manifest as love, compassion and patience towards fellow beings. As Jesus Christ advised, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” This advice has considerable spiritual and practical relevance.
All of us love ourselves the most. But if we can see others as ourselves, our love will flow freely. We believe that we are distinct individuals, but in truth, we are all fundamentally one. When love awakens, the sense of separateness dissolves, at least temporarily, and we experience oneness.
Our neighbours are the people we interact with in each and every moment of life. In that sense, family members, friends, colleagues and fellow travellers are all neighbours. If we can maintain good relations with them, it is we who will benefit. For many of us, loving our neighbours is not so easy. It is normal for human beings to find fault with others.
A newlywed couple started living in a new neighbourhood. The next morning, they saw their neighbour hanging clothes out to dry. The wife told her husband, “She hasn’t washed her dress properly. She probably doesn’t know how to wash her clothes properly.”
The husband did not say anything to this. In the days that followed, the same thing continued to recur every morning, and the husband consistently refrained from responding to his wife’s complaints.
After a few weeks, the wife pointed in great surprise to the clothes hanging on the washing line next door and told her husband, “Look, it seems our neighbour has finally learnt to wash her clothes properly. All the clothes on the line are really clean. I wonder who taught her how to wash her clothes!”
The husband replied, “I woke up early today and washed the dirt from our window panes.”
This is exactly what happens in life, too. If we want to see goodness in others, we must first purify our own mind. Negative emotions such as arrogance, jealousy, envy and hatred distort our vision. As a result, we are unable to accept and love others.
By cultivating a loving attitude towards those we interact with, we can purify our own mind and create around us an atmosphere filled with love and happiness. When we are prepared to hear the sorrows of the distressed, when we are ready to speak words of comfort to them, when we show the inclination to offer help to those who are going through a difficult time, in reality we are uplifting ourselves.
All are joined by the thread of love. Love knows no barriers, such as caste, creed, religion or nation. We are all like different beads joined by the thread of love. Love has no boundaries. Love is the essence of all religions.
Being a good neighbour is a quality we should have in every circumstance and at every moment in life. If we can be good neighbours to those we deal with closely, we will not have to go searching for peace anywhere else. Then peace has already become ours.