How To Not Hate Everybody’s Guts

An instructional guide for anyone that has trouble understanding where the heck everyone else is coming from…

“Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don’t see the self as self, what do we have to fear?”
― Lao-Tzu

I’ve often wondered why it is that everyone can be smart in so many ways, but can never seem to understand what someone else means when they say something. And while I wonder this, I also have to admit that I myself find it hard to understand many of the things other people say and do, or why they say and do them. As I thought about it, I realized that it’s really very simple – it’s like sunglasses.

Sunglasses aren’t just for blocking out light… they are filters. And there are many different kinds of sun glasses – most commonly Polarized (for reducing glare) or Photochromic (which automatically adjust for lighting conditions). The color of the sunglass lenses also have an effect on what they are best suited for, particularly with regard to the amount of visible light transmitted through the lenses into your eyes.

This isn’t a review of the best types of sunglasses though, nor is it a lesson in how to prevent eye damage through effective eyeware utilization. The only reason for reviewing the types of sunglasses is to illustrate the idea that you can see, or more accurately, NOT see, certain light frequencies by wearing certain physical filters. In fact, some types of light actually cause some people physical pain, so a doctor may prescribe a special tinted glass for those people to prevent that pain, filtering out the offending colors.

How we connect with each other is very similar to how we wear sunglasses. Each of us operates on a certain frequency that makes perfect sense to ourselves. We often believe ourselves to be self-contained luminaries. We have shaped our world to be perfectly suited to the ways we say and do things in response to the situations that arise around us. We are most often able to react and respond in whatever way we need to in order to bring harmony to our own environment. What we see and hear is the world that exists, and outside of that world which we understand, exists varying degrees of chaos and misunderstanding.

What we often fail to do, however, is realize that what we are seeing outside of our personal universe is always filtered through the lenses of our own personal experience and design. If we take a moment to think about how profound that realization is, we can see that none of us has the ability to accurately define the true world around us, and that can be a little scary. Who we are, what we are, what we think, what we see, what we hear – everything that we have come to believe is truth and reality in our lives – is only as real as the filters through which we see it to be.

The fact is, however, that seeing the world through our own filters is neither good nor bad – it is simply the way things are. Just like different people are comfortable wearing different types of sunglasses, so too different people will be comfortable seeing their world through different filters. The important thing to understand is that those differences are perfectly ok – they are the things that create the most opportunities for change. Everything that we see as different about everything around us – both what we see as good and what we see as bad – is nothing more than the differences between our own filters and our neighbors’.

This is why it is so very important to exercise extreme caution when trying to define the boundaries of what should be called good and bad. That task must be approached with an understanding that doing so is a journey into other worlds – worlds occupied by people who often see things that we can’t see, or who can’t see things that we think we see. Each step is potentially filled with unseen mines that could destroy our relationships with those around us, and perhaps even cause damage to our own sense of self.

This is not to say that there are no limits to acceptable behavior – quite the contrary. Each person needs to consider their own actions as they relate to the world around them, and understand that they have only the right to their own world, and they are guests in that of everyone else. Actions that impact ourselves alone should be guided by our own set of filters. Those which may impact others, however, must be guided by a set of filters that are agreed to by those with whom we choose to interact. The common filters that help us in that regard, are often referred to as laws, ethics, standards, morals, etc., and it is critical that those filters be applied across the board, and interpreted fairly.