Greetings self-help readers,
I am amazed by the many opportunities that we have to learn on a daily basis. I am speaking of the chances we get every day to learn about ourselves. We can learn from the bad things that happen to us as well as the good things. I believe that everything and everyone can be a teacher. The Bible itself talks about how God works for the good of those who love Him in all things. I believe this. Mr. Kahlil Gibran talks about how we can learn kindness from the unkind and yet how we are ungrateful for this teacher. Yes, mean people can in fact teach us to be nicer. When we see how ugly mean words and actions look from a spiritual standpoint we can make a decision to be nice. No one wants to look ugly physically or spiritually.
When I focus on learning rather than reacting I will make much better decisions. You see when I simply react, my decisions are based on my emotions rather than my intellect and spirituality. I have learned that when I respond in a meaningful manner to a mean person, it is like matching fire with fire. In these cases, both people are likely to be burned. I can instead choose to match their fire of unkindness with the water of kindness. We all know that water puts out fire. It is up to me as to how I will respond.
How do you respond when you are challenged to be spiritual? Do you match meanness with meanness or kindness? Hate with love or hate? If we take the time to learn and not react we will grow into the people the creator of the universe has called us to be. We can grow quite tall spiritually and eventually dwarf the demons of unkindness just by not responding in kind and learning how to deal with situations. The same situations will most likely repeat themselves. Once we learn how to deal with them correctly we should be able to handle them better when they come around again.
