Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about what

we get wrong about other people and

how to see them more objectively

and with a little more compassion.

So as we go through life, it can sometimes

be really difficult to understand why

other people speak or act the way they do.

And it can be equally as hard

to witness larger scale human

behaviors that lead to suffering,

injustice and harm on the planet.

We might make all kinds of assumptions

or judgements about other people

that sometimes, for instance, some

people are just bad, horrible,

and selfish and that's that.

But if mindfulness teaches us anything,

it's that if we look a little bit closer

and see through our judgments, we begin

to see a really different picture.

We begin to see that those people

are struggling with the same

things we all struggle with.

For instance, we all hurt sometimes.

We're all reactive sometimes,

despite our wishes to do better.

And we're all dealing with this human

mind and all of its conditioned patterns.

Patterns that can make us

become anxious sometimes, greedy

sometimes, angry, afraid, insecure,

selfish, and sad sometimes.

Being human is hard, a lot of the time.

And I think that one of the most wonderful

things about ongoing mindfulness practice

is that when we investigate and get to

know our own mind and why it does what

it does, we start to understand not only

ourselves, but everyone else better too.

The way our mind operates is the same

basic way that all minds operate.

And the more that we see this, the

more we naturally have compassion

and understanding towards people,

even when they're not at their best.

So there's a poem called Compassion.

It's one of my favorites

by Miller Williams.

And in it, he says these words,

"Have compassion for everyone you

meet, even if they don't want it.

Because what seems like conceit,

bad manners or cynicism is actually

often a sign of what no ears

have heard and no eyes have seen.

You do not know what wars are going on

down there where spirit meets the bone."

I love that sentiment.

So that's the invitation I offer

for you today, for all of us today,

to remember that we get a lot of

stuff wrong about other people.

We often don't see the full picture.

So if you can let go of your assumptions

and have compassion for them, because you

never know what wars might be going on

there, where their spirit meets the bone.

So that's the invitation, to be more

compassionate with everybody you know

and everybody you meet this week.

So thank you for your practice

and your presence here with us.

And now let's settle in

for today's meditation.