Empower

"Don't hate me for who I am. Love me for who I could be." -11-6-11

We look for a part of ourselves in the people we try to connect with. The people we want to spend the most time with and get to know the best intrigue us because we can relate to these individuals, or at least we want to relate to them and be like them.

However, there are also those individuals who we cannot relate to. We see no reflection of ourselves, either as we are or as we wish to be, in their personality. Therefore, we distance ourselves from these people. We tend to mock, loath, judge, or just ignore them.

More than anything, people desperately desire to be understood. Somewhere deep inside every human being is a personal sacredness of being. Psychologists would call it the "self-serving bias". People just want other people to look on them with favor. They want to be understood the way they understand themselves. Regardless of what they do, no matter how worthless they feel, they will always feel pity and  sympathy for themselves because after all, they truly understand how they're feeling.

We need to start acknowledging people's "self" whether we can relate to it or not. Not just to some, but to everyone. We must look for the affection with which individuals hold themselves. In essence, we must love others as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18).