Such victories started to feel less satisfying. I started to appreciate his need to feel respected in his home. I realized that abiding by his rules would cost me little, but to him it would mean a lot. I recognized that sometimes he really did have a point & in insisting on getting my own way all the time without regards to his feelings or needs, I was in someway diminishing myself.
I'm listening to Obama's Audacity of Hope on my Ipod as I get some desk work done today. I also use it when I'm on the treadmill. I had one of those moments of revelation today as I'm in the middle of chapter two. He speaks of Values and how he learned them. He credits his mother mostly, but in the above quote he speaks of himself in High School and those typical rebellions we see many teenagers have. He speaks a few pages later that we, as a country, are experiencing an "empathy deficit". That principle of "how does that make you feel" that we teach our infants with, but somehow have lost touch with as we got older.
It's like when I was watching television last night. I'm hooked on a show called True Beauty. At first glance, its a real fluff show. A bunch of snobby "pretty" people thrown together and given challenges. But the underlying challenge that they don't know about until they are eliminated from the show is that their search is more for inner beauty than for outer. That those small things you say or do does make a difference. Do you still live by the GOLDEN RULE?
Posts
