Treating Everyone Like I Was in Love With Them

Here is a thought experiment to start your day: What would happen if you treated everyone like you were in love with them?

Derek Tasker has a poem titled I Wonder. I had not heard the poem before someone read it this weekend near the end of the Spiritual Directors International conference.

Here is how Tasker puts the question:

I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with.

Challenging, to be sure. But also incredibly exciting to wonder what it would be like if that was how we approached each other. To imagine how that might change them….change us…change the world.

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