I have a good friend who is a psychiatrist. Or perhaps I should say I have a good psychiatrist who is a friend. A couple of years ago, when I was a patient of his, he told me I was an idealist. It came as a bit of a shock because I've been trying for 39 years to be a cynic. Isn't that a terrible thing to confess? I confess it now only because in all that time I never really made the grade. I was a lousy cynic. But why "work" on being cynical? I feel sure a good many of us do. Why do we not work that hard on being idealistic? I used to think that I couldn't get hurt if I was a cynic. If I didn't expect much of myself and my fellow man, then how could I be disappointed by human failures, my own included. It was pretty obvious to me at the time that if I was to survive in this world, I'd have to get people in the proper perspective and the first person I had to get in perspective was myself. I had always been ashamed of my loftiest instincts. Most people are. They equate these lofty motives with weakness and that is why today we seldom have a genuine kind word to say to each other. We think a lot of kind things but we are so slow to voice them. But I am digressing here. As I said, I had to first except myself for what I was. I had to forget the many mistakes I have made, and acknowledge the many weaknesses I had, and start from there. Once I accepted that I had just as many failings and weaknesses and prejudices as the next I was prepared to accept these same qualities in my fellow man. But you can't stop there. Next you must accept your own good and worthwhile qualities. We all have so many. When you begin to recognize them in your self, you start to look for them in others. That's when you start to get along with folks and really like them. Can I say this one more time. "There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it will behoove any of us to speak ill of the rest of us”.
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