There are people sometimes in life who behave in ways we simply cannot fathom. From our point of view they may seem mean, ungiving, perhaps even evil. When we have to interact with them, whether because we share business concerns with them or office space or child-rearing responsibilities, it can feel impossible not to take their behavior personally, not to fall into defensiveness and perhaps even sometimes attack. When we give ourselves leave to do this, we have on some level decided this person is 'other' than us. Different, alien, and no longer worthy of treatment as our brother or sister. We have written them off.

If someone is dangerous to us, absolutely we want to take the steps necessary to protect ourselves and our interests. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But our spiritual work in these sorts of situations is in that under-explored area of keeping ourselves open to their humanity--refusing to demonize our protagonist while staying out of the role of punching bag. This isn't easy; but as people trying to live a 'spiritual' life, it is essential.  

Why try to love those who actively attack us, who seem to have nothing but antipathy for us?  

This type of interaction is a microcosm of all the wars of the world. We only can kill each other if first we have determined we are fighting someone who is inhuman. Who is other. The U.S., in the fire bombing of Tokyo at the end of WWII, killed somewhere between 100,000 and 140,000 civilians--mostly women, children and the elderly. The atomic and nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed at least that many. We are the good guys. We don't kill people indiscriminately. This is how the citizens of the U.S. at the time, and probably still to this day, think of our country. We don't do that. And yet we did. We as a people could not have condoned such a thing unless on some level we had dehumanized the entire Japanese race.

Of course a war, and specific acts within a war, can be argued and defended, but always it's about what this other people are doing as the cause for our actions. We did what we did because they did what they did, and what they did was horrible. 

The Japanese, of course, were telling their own people the same thing about the Allies.

It's easy to find the reasons to justify ourselves against people who treat us badly. But nothing ever is solved by this. Peace is never found by polarizing. Killing your way to peace is like gorging your way to the perfect body.

Peace begins with me. Always. If I cannot have peace in my own life, then I am adding to the lack of peace in the collective. Consciousness is only one thing. I must find the way to bring peacefulness to it. I must bring adaptation energy to this oneness to help balance the lack of adaptation energy of the world at large.

Peace does not mean the other person has to change. Peace means I find a way not to hate them. I find a way to remember they are human beings.

There's a person in my life who seems to want me to suffer. When I think of her, I am not made happy. When I have interaction with her, it feels like sharing space with a rattlesnake. I do not understand how she can be who she is, how she can do what she does. But I can remind myself that from her side of the equation, she absolutely is justified in how she behaves. From her vision of the history of the world, she is on the side of righteousness. She does not see herself as evil. She does not think she's doing anything wrong.

And if that doesn't work for me, I can remind myself she once was a child, trying to be loved by parents who abandoned her, the first when she was nine, the second when she was thirteen. She was left to live on her own and fend for herself. When you see how young thirteen is, then imagine having to make sense of a life in which these people who are supposed to care for you and keep you safe drop you on the side of the road to live or to die, it's up to you, you can begin to realize that simply surviving something like that and making it into adulthood is an accomplishment. It doesn't excuse bad behavior, but it does explain it.

It's my job to learn how to love and to be loved. This woman never will love me. But also she will not darken a space in my mind that could be better used for living. That is up to me. And, truth be told, it has nothing to do with her.

Today I will ask myself if there is any upset in my life I am blaming on another, and I will remind myself there are no stressful situations, there only are stressful responses.

         Golden Gate Bridge in Fog, San Francisco, CA