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Nothing overtly happened today but I kept thinking as I sat in Sacrament Meeting about all the divides that are flooding life. I kept going back to Gospel is Love. Problem is I can’t figure out how to do it, or even how to feel it. And I know that I am not alone. This is not just an LDS problem, but a church with a lofty Zion ambition I assumed would have a bigger heart.
So either in or out of the church have you learned how to love or like people you don’t naturally like or feel connected to?
Please share. I am out of ideas.
Mom3: I find there are people in my life, that at first glance I have no common ground with them. We talk about the weather and current events at first. I have found that listening to them, and validating their life choices goes far. A non-judgemental ear is important to all of us. We can find common ground .. We just have to allow our hearts to listen and really hear another person. We have to listen to hear THEM. Too often, we listen only to figure out when someone is done talking. We are focused on what WE plan to say, rather than really listening.
In LDS society, when people are in uncomfortable social situations, they fall back on validating the church. They assume that will be common ground. It isn’t always. It can make people come across as automatons/Stepford wives rather than as individuals. The struggle is to get past that.
Every time I am dealing with someone whose life choices don’t make sense, I have found one of two things. 1.) I don’t know “the rest of the story”. Key details have been left out. 2.) I have not experienced their same background. Once someone’s background, culture, and life experiences is taken into account, their choices suddenly make sense too.
Occasionally, simple insanity is involved, but that is rarer than options 1.) and 2.).
Example: an LDS family pays tithing before paying for rent and food. They do not have enough money for food because they paid their tithing. For someone outside of LDS culture, the decision to pay tithing looks INSANE. But in the context of the LDS culture, it was a normal and rational thing to do.
Every culture and religious tradition has those same decision trees that an outsider would consider insane. Only with full knowledge of background and culture do their decisions appear rational.
So .. Advice .. Really listen to their life story. Don’t judge. Assume they have a valid reason for doing things that look insane from a distance.
And something my mom used to say: “Everyone has problems. If you meet someone who appears to not have problems, that just means you don’t know them well enough.” Take time to know them and their struggles. Love and acceptance follows.
I do agree with AP – I have found that on the rare occasion when I have sincerely tried to get to know someone and listened to their story that I have come to appreciate them more as people just struggling to get by like I am. The thing is, there are some people I just don’t want to put that sort of effort into. And I’m a bit of a curmudgeon at times besides. (That is to say it is easy for me to forgo a ward activity because I don’t always like to be around people.) I think, though, you are asking about the more difficult people – the ones I might not want to put the effort into. I basically have decided two things. First, the English word “love” has so many definitions and there are so many different kinds of love that I’m not so sure the scriptural/doctrinal (or whatever it is) love is really much more than a lack of open animosity. (No that I don’t struggle with that at times, too.) Second, and related to the first, I have figured out that I don’t have to particularly like someone in order to have this lack of animosity. I can still view someone as a fellow traveler who sees through the same dark glass I see through but not particularly have any feeling about them one way or the other. In my own twisted mind that is a form of love. (Maybe a better way to say it is if I don’t hate them I must love them.)
In the real practice I find avoidance works pretty well. With some people if I don’t have to interact, I don’t.
I get hot flashes (just kidding) — love flashes where I seem to be able to be kind to people that are different from myself. It’s kind of life I am divorced from the world — detached in some way — and find it effortless to be kind. Also, it can be fascinating to learn about them and how they got to be the way they are. I find this kind of discussion only works when the person is of the same openmindedness that I am — if they aren’t they take questions about their perspective on life as criticism. When for me, it’s exploration and charitable understanding.
Overall, being a loving person to strangers isn’t part of my objectives or worldview right now — but I appreciate it.
There is always the old Southern phrase, “Bless their Heart” One of the most uppity, obnoxious, prim and proper church ladies I ever came across just seemed so caught up in proper manners that I found her annoying. Then her daughter ratted her out. Her daughter talked about visiting her mom’s family .. They lived so deep in the woods that they didn’t even have an outhouse .. Everyone just went out and found some random spot in the woods and used leaves, as TP wasn’t in the budget. Baths were few and far between. Education and accomplishments were low. Suddenly, I understood the reason this woman had such a focus on manners. It gave me an understanding and compassion I never expected to feel for her.
Judge not. The older I get, the more I understand that one.
amateurparent wrote:There is always the old Southern phrase, “Bless their Heart”
One of the most uppity, obnoxious, prim and proper church ladies I ever came across just seemed so caught up in proper manners that I found her annoying. Then her daughter ratted her out. Her daughter talked about visiting her mom’s family .. They lived so deep in the woods that they didn’t even have an outhouse .. Everyone just went out and found some random spot in the woods and used leaves, as TP wasn’t in the budget. Baths were few and far between. Education and accomplishments were low. Suddenly, I understood the reason this woman had such a focus on manners. It gave me an understanding and compassion I never expected to feel for her.
Judge not. The older I get, the more I understand that one.
Great story — I have reached the same realization. Truth is in our experiences. I just learned in a massive assignment that there is a philosophy of what knowledge is — knowledge is constructed by each individual based on their experiences and social environment. They call it the social construction of reality. Each person has their construction of what the world is, and to them, it is truth.
So, next time you see something that looks “off” remind yourself of your incredible ignorance about the person’s life experiences and the manner in which they were socialized. I don’t believe we should necessarily be bound by these constructions from our experiences all the time, but for some, it is very difficult to change their worldview when life and their social structure has reinforced it for so long. In fact, this is one way of loving a TBM person — recognize they are a product of the culture of the church…
You love them while at the same time knowing you do not like them or feel connected with them. Allow yourself to be honest with how you feel. Then you choose to act out of love, regardless of how you honestly feel about others.
There will simply be people I am around I know are too different or painful for me to ever like. I accept that. When they stop being idiots, I’ll start liking them more.
But if they need me to help move a piano, or they need me to pass the sacrament to them, or they need me to cover a primary class for them…I would lovingly help.
If they want to go hang out and get lunch and chat and get to know me better…I appreciate the offer but am busy that day (and be careful I ask what day before responding about being busy on that day
:silent: ).I want to be honest with how I love people. I’m not always the best at tactfully showing it, but I try and allow myself to not like others.
This is an interesting question you’ve asked Mom3: Quote:So either in or out of the church have you learned how to love or like people you don’t naturally like or feel connected to?
Usually if I don’t like someone or strongly disagree with them, I do everything I can to avoid them.
We had a member in our ward who was very opinionated. Everything revolved around a gospel principle.
With no sense of humor.
Then we had a High Priest social with our wives & I met this man’s wife. She was completely opposite.
We told me that she was glad to see that we were coming to church again. She told me her story about being inactive & the way members of her ward at the time treated her. (It wasn’t good.) Then her husband joined in the conversation & I found out that he had been a FT missionary in the ward where I joined the church. (40+ years ago.) We knew some of the same people.
Because I got to know them better, my opinion changed. We are still not BFF’s. But my opinion changed for the
better.
I have nothing substantive to add. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the responses. They have been thought provoking. For me love is something entirely different than wantingto hang out with someone. I’ll hang out with someone if I like them but I probably won’t if I don’t. Love goes beyond that. When I love someone I’ll sacrifice some of my wants and desires in order to serve them. That service can take the form of hanging out with someone for a while but it doesn’t have to. Patiently and quietly listening to someone else rant about their views on the opposite side of the political spectrum can be an act of service. Sitting in PH opening exercises in October and patiently and quietly listening to someone talk on and on about BYU football can be an act of service.
How do I love someone I don’t like? Through service. (notice a theme?) There are the cliches, there are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met, but I do think we learn to love people through service.
I’ve thought about the phrase: a woman becomes a mother when she gets pregnant, a man becomes a father when he sees his baby. A woman starts giving service to a baby the instant she becomes pregnant, there’s a maternal bond. The father starts giving service to the child once it’s born. I believe a large part of those bonds of love result from the service that the parents provide for the child. A child is a stranger until it becomes ours through service, I think that’s why adoption works.
Where I struggle is the flip side of the coin. People you start to dislike because you are serving them all the time.
:crazy: Maybe you know what I mean. You spend 4 hours helping someone get their ox out of a pit and immediately afterwards they decide to take their ox for a walk right next to the pit. Of course the ox falls in again and they come back to you looking for help. Do this enough times and it starts to sully your opinion on them.Maybe that’s how god feels. Oh, nibbler’s ox again.
[img]http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-rolleyes008.gif [/img] Someone check the charts, has it been 490 times yet?Definitely, my late parents… gone for years… very different to me in some ways, but I love them, or at least their memory because of their kindness to me. I realize their faults and their differences, but do not think purely in those terms. It’s easier when it’s blood relatives.
Now when it’s not blood relatives, I have found that many people do have some feature or other that makes them endearing. Some people it’s very hard to find, but I have found that some of the people in my ward who have different views to me do have kind aspects to their character.
Remember also that some people who have been grumpy or miserable are that way because of factors that were not always under their control – events that happened to them, depression etc.
I recommend you find somewhere that does guided metta bhavana meditation in a non-religious context. It is meant to generate loving kindness, and may help you appreciate others. I still have a long way to go.
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