My Books Available Now on Amazon ebooks

Amazon Kindle books now have some of my books. Please keep checking for more titles as they become available. Thanks!

Saturday, December 17, 2022

A New Way to Look at Life

 Florence Scovel Shinn put a new spin on a familiar teaching:

Regard your neighbor as yourself. 

There are many ways to look at anything and everything. Let us consider some of them in relation to this quote. Jesus used the word love in the first of his two great commandments. Here Florence uses the word regard. Somehow that takes me to a different place.

How do we regard ourselves? How do we hold our foibles and errors, large and small? Are we generous with ourselves or harsh? Are we even honest to ourselves about our lives? Do we boast and come to life full of ego, or are we humble about our successes? etc etc etc.

It leads me to think that maybe the only way we can regard our neighbor is the way we regard ourselves. Or, the only way we can love our neighbor is by loving ourselves.

Honesty and forgiveness need to lead the way so that our regard and love for our neighbors and ourselves can be free of distortion. 

And, of course, our neighbor includes all that we call other. It is not just those who are in our family or group, or those who live on our cul de sac or in our building. It is not only humankind, but also it is all life and our entire earth system. 

It turns out there is a general rule - The way we do anything is how we do everything. Or how we regard anything/anyone is how we regard everything/everyone. Or how we love anything/everyone is how we love anything/everyone.

Don't just believe me or disagree with me. Think on these things.


No comments:

Post a Comment