Do you believe that? Maybe you immediately call to mind a person you’ve come across in your lifetime who seemed to be the opposite of lovable…maybe they inspired feelings of disgust or hate in you. But could you love them, given a change of circumstance or understanding, or being at a different place in your life? I would argue that the answer is yes. In fact, I would argue that there is the possibility for you to fully embrace, in a genuine loving way, any person on this planet. Maybe even fall in love with.
All of this coming from a woman who is divorced…I know. But despite my own failed experiment to treat love as a commitment until death does us part, I still believe that the next person I decide to love could be anyone from the postman (who my dog hates, and you know dogs are good judges of character) to someone halfway across the world, to that old guy in church who blows his nose constantly. Really, I could love any of them if only I allow myself to. I believe that every person on this planet is lovable, even the rudest, most self-centered, seeking harm type of ones—if only we seek first to understand them.
Think about how you regard babies. They become spontaneously irritable, cry for seemingly no reason, yell when it’s inappropriate to make noise, and pee, poop, and vomit at any given time or place. But do we dislike the baby for these things? No, we understand that the baby does not understand what’s expected of it; how others may feel about its behaviors; how inconvenient its habits can be for us; and that the world does not in fact revolve around its needs. We see the baby’s best intentions. Babies are undeniably lovable because we believe in their innocence.
But we give much less grace to adult humans. We expect that they should walk into every situation recognizing the dynamics, understanding the other players, and anticipating the needs of every delicate soul around them. Without even realizing it, we often expect them to revolve around our needs. Instead of recognizing that they are approaching each situation with their own perspective that’s a result of their past experiences and has its own needs, we focus on how their words and actions affect us. We have such high expectations of the ways other interact with us. We want to be unconditionally loved and understood like that baby, yet we rarely experience that sort of treatment as adults. But what if we afforded it to others?
When you cannot love someone, look into that person’s eyes long enough to find the hidden rudiments of the child of God in him.
– F. Enzio Busche
Take the guy who is talking too loudly at a restaurant, or the one that smells bad on the subway, or obnoxious kids, or even someone you see on the news who committed a crime. What if you attempted to see his innocence? What if you understood all the past experiences he had that created him into this specimen you see today? What if you knew what his morning was like, the way his mother treated him, the relationships he’s had….Could you maybe, one day, love him after all?
