Getting Cut With Your Own Sword

When I was a kid, the newspaper comics section had one of those puzzles where you had to find the differences between two almost identical drawings.

I was pretty good at those.

The differences seemed to jump right out at me.

And as it turns out, that ability followed me into real life.

Only it became a two-edged sword.

I’ve been able to cut through with one side of it.

But, honestly, I’ve probably cut myself more often with the other.

For me, “cutting through” meant being pretty good at spotting someone’s shortcomings.

Sometimes I could see them before the person even finished saying their name.

I was good at it.

Maybe too good.

Because once I spotted what I perceived as a person’s flaws, I had a tendency to put them in a box – a category.

And once I put them there, I didn’t always look much deeper.

That’s the problem with seeing only the downside of somebody. You leave very little room for their upside to show itself.

It’s the old “judging a book by its cover” thing.

Except I wasn’t just looking at the cover.

I was deciding what was inside.

I’ve had to learn a different practice:

Let the judgment pass by.

Notice it, sure.

But don’t build a house on it.

Because if I can put that judgment in my back pocket, I have a chance to see more of what's right in front of me, and discover more of the person underneath it.

And that’s really what I want – to cut through to the real you.

So, if you want to get past the surface with people you meet, maybe it’s time to put your sword back in its sheath.

Not because you were wrong about what you saw.

Just because what you saw probably isn’t the whole story.

I’ll confess, I haven’t completely outgrown this practice.

But I’m getting better at it.

And someday, I hope you’ll join me for my March for Less Superiority.

It’s going to be a march for a pretty worthwhile cause.

And I suspect there’ll be a lot of us there.

All the best,

John