Good people can end up doing some pretty bad things, not because they are evil, but because they are in varied ways tired or sad, worried or weak. Fundamentally decent people can at points behave less then optimally.

Forgiving bad behavior is hard because of "splitting", a maneuver of the mind, a tendency to see people as entirely good or bad. In dividing humanity like this, we protect ourselves from grown-up ambivalence. It feels safer to think that other people can't be trusted.

- from this clip

  

Everybody has good and bad personality traits. We use judgement to determine what's good and what's bad. But judgement is self reflecting, and different from us is judged as wrong, so love has to go beyond judgement, up to full acceptance.

- from this clip


In unconditionally accepting, nothing is bare minimum. Nothing is absolutely must. None of your expectations is universally certified. Each person has the right to choose their values and mistakes and if what they choose affects you, you either adapt or learn to negotiate.

In unconditionally accepting, you have to set aside your own rights and wrong. You have to set aside your good intentions, the concern of how it will affect your or others. First, you try to adapt. Then you can negotiate respectfully. And if that doesn't work, then you can use your other right to stay or leave.

- from this clip


Practical example:

I watched a movie not so long ago, where the couple gets into a huge fight because the man didn't wipe the bathroom floor after showering. 

In the clip from which I took the text above, the preacher makes a statement about this, about how small requests will transform into huge fights.

The woman thinks that wiping the bathroom floor is bare minimum, an absolute must, after she asked her boyfriend this for a hundred times. But she is in the wrong, because it's his right not to wipe the floor.

She is the one building up tension by asking him to change for a hundred times. So first, she should catch her self when she makes such demands.

Second, she should have adapted. "Why is that bothering me and how can I adapt?" For example wearing slippers instead of socks, if she hated getting her socks wet.

If she couldn't find a solution next came negotiation. What is she willing to do in return that he cares about? Respectfully negotiating until they found something that works.

And I think these three solutions would be enough to avoid any fight.

This was the movie.


The prison system in most countries tends to place children below the age of eighteen in separate young offenders institutions which treats inmates with a degree of kindness and hope.

But after this age, for the most part, prisoners are locked up in bare cells. They should have known better.

And yet we are all "young offenders", however old we might actually be. We all need our crimes to be treated with a degree of empathetic investigation.

The reason why little children and big people do wrong is - despite the differences in age and size  - exactly the same: evil is a consequence of injury.

It is the work of extraordinary patience and humanity - it is the work of love - to go in search of what this wounds might be.

Our judgement on behavior never has to change, but our sense of why it occurred can be transformed.

- from this clip