Daily Inspiration 4-19-17

"Everybody is unique.

Do not compare yourself

with anybody else

lest you spoil God's curriculum."

-- Baal Shem Tov

When I first saw this quote this morning, I loved it, and I was struck with the idea of how beautiful that whole idea of uniqueness is, especially when considering the sheer volume of over 8 billion of us on the planet today. Think about it: 8 billion unique and individual human beings with constant and never-ending changes to each of our preferences, prejudices, and interactions whether in physical proximity or in thought.

Then I thought that we all want. We may not always be clear of those wants, but we want. We're moving. We may not be clear where we are going consciously, but we are going.

The one thing that stood out for me was that there are no two alike no matter how similar they may seem. No duplicates.

And the strange thing is that for most of my life, there seems to have been an internal demand that there should be duplicates, think-alike's, clones. The in-crowd, and the outcasts. History demonstrates this and there have been all manner of conflicts toward that end by way of the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the evil, the light, and the dark, the rich and the poor, and all wanting parity and separation at the same time.

That history has been in force since the dawn of time and it hasn't worked out yet in the way so many think it should.

I think the reason for that is in not only not accepting each of our uniqueness's but not fully celebrating it, understanding it, delighting in it.

So I was thinking about relationships and how so often we expect the other to read our minds about what we want, or how we may attempt to manipulate the other in word or deed toward more similarity and sameness. You should want what I want and stuff like that. You're either with me or against me is not far away.

But as we can seek out the uniqueness of each other and see what we can do to give the other what they might like or want as a gift--to honor that unique desire rather than push against it, we open up a whole new world of interaction.

This would be more like love than the thing we call love a good deal of the time. I don't mean selflessly giving up what I want for what the other wants, but to recognize and celebrate the uniqueness that is their desires and see the joy of celebration expand as we open to how we might help them celebrate their own uniqueness. This means more a willingness to let go and let the other go their way in their desires as we honor their choices and the uniqueness of where those choices come from. At the same time, we want to recognize and celebrate our own with the full confidence of the gift of God that it is.


You Really Like To Eat Snails? How Fascinating! Tell Me More!

Spread Some Joy Today--by seeing that joy that is in every single person regardless of what they seem to show.