The Dangerous Vice of Your Virtues.
As humans, we seem driven by the notions of right and wrong. We seem to like black and white answers in a universe of so many colors, because it makes choosing easier. If you’ve got an even chance between getting it right and getting it wrong, then it’s an easier choice to make than if you know that your chance of getting it right is one in ten, or one in fifty.
So we try to see everything as good and evil.
Most of us honestly try to do what we think is good, and yet we are able to garner some measure of understanding when someone chooses something other than that which we think is right.
That is, until it comes to something that we think is a virtue, because then all bets are off, and we move into the dangerous arena where our desire to feel superior goes to battle against our inclination to be kind.
Because seeing someone do something we feel is in opposition to virtue has the terrible tendency to make us feel like we are right.
Which can become very addictive.
Before we are aware of it, we begin to judge everyone by the standards that we feel are virtuous, and gravitate only to those who share our self-defined version of virtue, wholesomeness and worthiness. In the blink of an eye, we divide the world into those who are good, and those who are not.
And guess which side of the line we always fall on.
There’s a peculiar danger in judging your own virtues, in that we can very soon find ourselves puffed up in our own importance, secure in the knowledge of our own goodness as we see those around us choose what we consider unclean and unworthy.
In doing so, we spend so much time looking at the errors of others that we cannot see the hardness of our own hearts, and our separation from those who might not look, feel, or believe like we do.
As with all addictions, isolation follows, and then a bitterness sinks in.
Whenever I find myself judging someone, I try to stop and see just how many things we have in common, rather than counting those things on which we disagree, and look for all the ‘virtues’ that we share, which are so many.
I have found this to be a powerful exercise in community and caring, forcing me to find the common humanity in our existence, rather than finding solace in my imagined superiority.
You’ll be amazed at how many wonderful people are around you when you seek for the good in them, rather than seeing what you consider to be the bad.
For me, this practice has helped me to see the divine spark in everyone (well, almost everyone… :) ) around me. It changes my interactions with those who might be or believe differently, and it helps me step into the world each day with a greater peace, a stronger sense of love, and a deeper desire to serve in any way that I can.
For there is good in this world, and in people, if we will only train our eyes to see it, and our souls to find it.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
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