Regina Linke
One of the most heart-opening truths that I came upon as a young adult is this: with as much intensity as I sense, feel, think, plan and dream; so, too, does every other person on this earth. “What then,” I had asked myself rhetorically, “makes me more important than someone else? What makes my pain or my needs more worthy of being acknowledged than someone else’s?”
In my latest book, The Oxherd Boy: Parables of Love, Compassion, and Community (published by Penguin Random House), the rabbit and the boy illustrate this parallelism in their first meeting:
The rabbit’s nose quivered with curiosity. “Who are you?” she asked.
The oxherd boy drew closer. “I guess I’m another you, only different.”
In any encounter, to approach someone from this perspective is to witness their humanity. We recognise that they are equally intricate and delightfully complex. We acknowledge that they are as capable, changeable, and contradictory as ourselves. The challenge, then, is to build a modern society through gentle living with so many other complex beings.
Befriend yourself
One of the best places to start is with yourself. A huge part of the daily work of living within—and contributing to—a nurturing society is to understand one being with whom you have the greatest insight and greatest access: yourself. Notice how you interact the way you do with what’s in your orbit, one instance at a time, and probe into why that might be with honesty and kindness.
Admit that there’s more than what meets the eye
