How You Treat Others Is How You Treat Yourself
Continuing from my previous blog post Why You Should Love Your Enemies, here’s another essay on love. Firstly, the way you treat the people you hate, reflects how you treat the people you love.
Many people will see someone they’re close to, like a friend, a partner or a parent, who insults or maybe even becomes violent to people they dislike. You might think “oh he’s only doing this to people he doesn’t like, he’ll never do it to me.” Yes he will. Because in a relationship, disagreements and conflicts are inevitable. It’s impossible to find a person you have absolutely no issues with. So when he eventually spots something he hates about you, he’ll treat you in the exact same abusive manner he treated the people he dislikes. So if you see your boyfriend being all cuddly and nice to you but then snaps at the waiter who’s like 1 minute late in serving the food, that’s a red flag. As someone who’s been verbally abusive to several of my ex-girlfriends, I should know.
So if you want any chance of having a long-term, fulfilling relationship, you need to treat even the people you hate with love and respect. Either be quiet about their flaws or criticize them politely. And if you see your friend insulting someone for how they look or smell, interrupting and being rude to people they disagree with, giving way too much advice to people who aren’t interested.... Know that that will be the exact same way he’ll treat you at some point in your relationship. And if you know you will not tolerate that, then you have to distance that person from your life.
Furthermore, how you treat others reflects how you treat yourself. The unforgiving, harsh way you speak to people whenever they make mistakes, will be the voice in your head whenever you make a mistake. When I see someone viciously insult someone because of a difference in political or religious opinion, I can’t imagine the torture he experiences daily within his own mind. (Actually, I was diagnosed with Narcissism when I was 17, so i totally can imagine it.)
On the flip side, if you treat yourself with love: You don’t beat yourself up whenever you make a mistake, you let yourself rest when you’re tired, you eat healthy, you exercise, you sleep well.... You treat your body like the temple of God, you don’t fill it with junk, you clean it, you take care of it. The Kingdom of God is within all of us. You treat yourself like you’re divine, because you are divine. And because you treat yourself like an angel, you treat everyone else like an angel. Which is fair, because everyone is a child of God. There should be no favorites.
Everyone possess the spirit of God, but it’s been diluted by our fears, our attachments and our ego. But it also means it’s possible for everyone to become enlightened. And everyone, no matter how evil, can and wants to do good.
I heard a Buddhist writer once say that to remind herself of the inner goodness of every being, she’s go out on the streets and with every person that passes her, she’d note “Buddha? Buddha. Another Buddha. Buddha. Buddha....”