Just Love

January 16, 2015

Speaking to one of my advanced writing classes last week, something hit me:

One of the most important skills we try to teach our students at BYU is how to be a critical reader/consumer of the information and ideas they encounter as researchers/scholars/people.

And with the explosion of online content and materials available to us in modern society, this is a task we are asked to do sometimes 10s of 100s of times an hour.

We are constantly "filtering" content.

--We decide which emails to open and in what order.

--We determine if a text message really means what we interpret it to mean ("Did they sound sarcastic in that text? Or am I just misreading it?").

--We compare products, multimedia, social media posts ... and hundreds of other messages to determine if they are "good to read" or "not worth our time."

We have so many choices to make each day.

And I think that constant decision-making or filtering has made us somewhat prone to judging and measuring the value of every situation we encounter in life.

Now in some ways, this is a good thing.

I want my students to know how to discern between a "marketing ploy" and a truly "good" product or idea.

It's important that they learn how to eliminate all of the unnecssary and irrelevant (or even harmful) products and ideas in their lives.

But what happens when we extend that non-stop assessing or judging to people?

Is it healthy for us as an individual or society to constantly measure and place value on people and their choices, ideas, lifestyle?

I don't know?

This morning as I type and reflect on the many people I spent time with this week (whether in person, on the phone or electronically), I'm thinking it's important to accept and love people simply because they are my fellow brothers and sisters on Planet E.

I'm thinking it's time to practice loving vs. judging people.

And what I mean by that is this:

it is much (MUCH) more difficult to practice/learn compassion and love than it is to practice/learn critical thinking skills.

I mean, how hard it is to insulate ourselves in a world where we only encounter people who agree with us, look like us, reaffirm our own ideas and beliefs?

EASY-peasy.

It's much much more difficult to learn to love people--and as a result live with them--when we find ourselves so very very unlike one another.

And I think--as our global access to people and ideas grows (via technology)--it's going to be important for me/my family/my community/society to learn how to love and respect each other because of our differences.

The differences keep us growing, thinking, and evolving.

[Jumping off of existential soapbox now.]

Have a beautiful weekend.

8)