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If You Want to Appreciate Someone as They Really Are, Do This
Spiritual guru Ram Dass left us this perceptive gem
Have you ever noticed that we load ourselves up with garbage trucks of misperceptions when we see people? No. Me neither. That is, not until I came across this delightful paragraph from spiritual guru Ram Dass:
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree, and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is.”
We can’t change our mistakes until we recognize them, and Ram Dass helps us do just that in the kindest way possible. Before thinking deeply about what he said, if you asked me whether I see people clearly, I’d probably have said yes. Most of the time, I have a sharp perception when it comes to the way I view people and my judgments of them.
But here’s the kicker I gleaned from Ram Dass: there’s a problem with judging people in the first place. Suppose we want to see them correctly, unhampered by our misunderstandings and egotistical assumptions. In that case, we must learn to appreciate them as they are, which is tough when you wear your ego specs.