A Gut Check on the Attitudes We Have About Others

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.
 
     Brennan Manning

It’s our common struggle to look at others, not seeing their inherent worth. It seems far easier and more natural to see the faults, failings and flaws of everyone else than it is to identify and celebrate their goodness. That tendency is to our detriment. We go through life looking for problems and weaknesses and we become jaded and cynical. If we spend out time looking for wrong, we will certainly find it. But that’s more than likely going to leave us perpetually disappointed, frustrated and unsatisfied. Is that any way to go through life?

It’s not, we think. Yet we do it. Why?

More than anything else, we believe, it’s because of our own identity issues. We are not confident enough in our own skin, in who we are, to allow ourselves to recognize the goodness and gifts in others. And everyone has goodness to be found. Everyone has gifts to offer.

When we’re not comfortable in our own skin we look down on others because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Rather than doing the (often) hard work of strengthening our own character and abilities we find it easier to tear others down so that we may be “lifted up”. But that is a false result, an illusion. Why must we degrade others in order to build ourselves up? When will we realize that greater good will emerge when we are all built up, when we are all recognized for our own valuable and unique gifts?

Our society, based on class distinctions, honors some to the dishonor of others. It’s easy to value those who make a lot of money over those who do not. It’s easy to think that those with more necessarily deserve more and that those with little only deserve the little they have. But we fail to recognize that what one makes in salary, for example, is not necessarily a fair assessment of who they are and of how much they have to offer to the common good. Women, whose careers have been spent raising children, nurturing a family, organizing and maintaining a home, have often felt this dishonor. Simply because they are not paid a salary for what they do they are far too often looked down upon as not having inherent value. People who are in what are considered lower-level professional positions … the clerk at the 7 – Eleven, the nursing home aide, the social worker, the sanitary worker – all deal with challenges that many of us would not ever want to handle and care for other’s needs in often unglamorous ways. It’s too easy to overlook them and to underappreciate them.

We know someone who has many times exhibited an embarrassing attitude toward those in service positions. One afternoon we met him for a business lunch and were horrified at the attitude he showed. After eating, while we were meeting about some issues that we needed to discuss, our server asked if she could clear away some of our place settings. Unable to reach all the way to the back of the booth in which we were sitting, she asked us if we could hand her several plates. The man we were with blatantly ignored her. So she asked again. This time he responded and proceeded to rip into her for her asking him to do her job. He humiliated her in front of us and others, dismissing her as someone worthless and incompetent. We were embarrassed too.

When we value others we won’t treat them like that; we won’t degrade them or diminish them by our words.

We all have a tendency to look down upon other people and to say things that judge them in harsh and unfair ways. It’s vital that we do a gut check, often, to clearly assess our motives, our words and our attitudes. We are all better off when we look at people not just for what they are not, but for who they are and are growing to become.

Photo by Kaspars Eglitis on Unsplash