Don’t hate, appreciate

By Emily Williams, Assistant Features Editor

I believe we live in a society and culture today which loves to a.) jump to conclusions and b.) maliciously judge a book by its cover. I’m sure you have experienced your fair share of both: being judged before actually being known, along with being guilty of judging another before you know them entirely.

I have experienced the sting and frustration of the first scenario and been guilty of the second as well. In our defense, we are human and it’s our natural tendency to look at someone and immediately form an opinion about them based on what they’re wearing, the color of their skin, their mannerisms, etc. But why is it that so often we tend to highlight the negative qualities of a person in our mind before we acknowledge the good? It’s an easy thing to do but think about the difference it would make in our lives and in the lives of others, if we decided we were going to eagerly focus on the good aspects of a person rather than the bad.

Whether they want to admit it or not, even those people in our lives who seem impossible to get along with or who seem to make it their goal to frustrate or cut you down have a desire to be loved, just like we all do. From a distance, it’s easy to focus on ourselves, our insecurities, our problems and to judge others for theirs.

We fail to see the bigger picture when we have this mindset. We fail to see the people walking in front of us to class, the people sitting across the room from us at Gigabytes, the people who we normally don’t see at all, for who they truly are: someone with desires, insecurities and needs, just like us.

The people who have had the biggest impact on me in my own life are those people who saw my flaws, saw that I didn’t have it all together (because I definitely don’t) and who loved me through all of them anyway.

They didn’t expect me to meet any kind of perfect expectation they might have had in their head about me, they just saw me for who I was and encouraged me by accepting that but also acknowledging that I still had room to grow.  A little love can go a long way and we need to be gracious in the way we deal with one another. As hard as it can sometimes be, look for the good in others, because it is there for you to find.

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