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We can build strong houses for our identities, with sturdy foundations. Then we can throw open the doors.
The thing we all need to remember–myself included–is that those other folks are a lot like us. The angry voter venting on TV, the refugee in the statistics, the criminal in the mugshot: every one of them is a human being of flesh and blood, someone who in a different life might have been our friend, our family, our beloved. Just like us, as one British soldier realised, ‘they have people they love at home’.
Far better, she says, is to accept and account for the fact that you’ll occasionally be cheated. That’s a small price to pay for the luxury of a lifetime of trusting other people.
The wonderful fact is that we live in a world where doing good also feels good. We like food because without food we’d starve. We like sex because without sex we’d go extinct. We like helping because without each other we’d wither away. Doing good typically feels good because it is good.
‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free,’ wrote the theologist Lewis B. Smedes, ‘and discover that the prisoner was you.’
Think as carefully about what information you feed your mind as you do about the food you feed your body.
In truth, it’s the cynic who’s out of touch. In truth, we’re living on Planet A, where people are deeply inclined to be good to one another.
