Confession, I am a recovering cynic. I labeled myself as a realist, but in reality I was cynical.
How could I not be? No matter where you turn you hear of nothing but murders, rapes, bombings, divorce, suicide, abuse, war, hatred, prejudice, bullying, gossip and the list goes on and on.
It’s sad because it makes me not trust people, especially at first. I wonder at times do we really like each other or are we pretending? How did we end up like this as a society? Did we learn anything from the past or are we just repeating it? How can we not look beyond another person’s skin color, beliefs, looks, etc. to see someone for who they truly are inside and out?
We all just trying to do our best with the knowledge that we have accumulated thus far. Tweet this
Think about that for a moment.
You meet someone you think is ignorant. You don’t know what they have been through. You certainly do not know what knowledge they have or haven’t been privileged to in their life. Maybe they haven’t had experiences that have allowed their thinking to open up so that it matches yours.
What if that’s an opportunity for you to teach someone or share you experiences so that other person can grow too?
How can we open our minds to see beyond the surface?
How can we try to see things from that person’s perspective?
Can we respond with love and compassion even if we have differences?
Everyone has a story. Everyone has struggles despite how perfect we try to portray our lives on social media or to our friends. It’s all BS.
Are we so far gone that we cannot even be real anymore?
We need to stop and get over ourselves (me included).
We need to be real with each other.
We need to ask for help. This one is hard for me. Asking for help used to make me feel weak, but as I gotten older I now know it actually shows strength of character when you can say you know what I need someone else to show me. When I do this, then I can continue to learn and grow as a person.
All I am asking, or rather hoping, for is that we open our minds and more importantly our HEARTS to one another no matter what you may agree or disagree on.
If we continue to do nothing, but complain about the problems in our world and the people in it what does that solve? Nothing.
All it does is fuel the constant state of chaos and negativity. How can we break this cycle? By being compassionate, loving, kind and forgiving of one another.
Look, I can’t judge anyone. I have a hard time following through with this myself. My goal is to adjust my cynical mindset and my heart so that I can show others compassion and kindness. I want to trust my fellow man again. I don’t want to wonder about hidden agendas or if someone is going to do me harm. I get that it is a reality of today’s world, but that doesn’t mean I have to live a life of cynicism.
Most people want to do good and somewhere along the way I forgot that fact. Did you?
Let’s retrain our cynical minds and hearts to be a positive light in this world. If we want to see a change in the world then we need to start with ourselves. To quote Michael Jackson’s “A Man in the Mirror”:
“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change”
Will you join me?
Image credit: Joey via Flickr