There’s no reason to take delight in anyone else’s misfortune, for in due time, you will find your own. We show our interior motives of love, compassion & humanity when we earnestly know that our success in not taken through someone’s failure, but rather just a desire to see ourselves as well as others succeed. We’ve grown accustomed to wanting to see someone fall hard. Like gladiators, we “duke it out” to take it all but we fail to see that there is actually more for the taking if we would just see the whole picture of abundance.
We watch our reality shows hoping to see humiliation in defeat, the self-destruct button of life coming down hard on our opponent’s side while we are lifted to some fleeting place of self-glorification. That is not how life is meant to be lived. Although competition is a healty & perfectly-acceptable part of our interactions, we aren’t meant to take what isn’t meant for us, or to win at any cost. We are truly meant to be a part of our communities, of interconnected “families” which strive to make things good for one another, not to slam one another down to take what wasn’t ours fairly.
We’re meant to love ourselves not to the point of excluding the others around us in some narcissistic way, but rather so that our self-acceptance enables us to do not only what is right for ourselves as well as to see what might be best for others. We are meant to share the lessons learned in life, often the hard way truly, not by taking them out on one another but rather by using the lessons to guide one another, offering our expertise to one another & by serving one another in mentorship. We forget that in our great promise lies the reward not for only ourselves & those closest to us, but our success in life offers great rewards to others through our abilities to provide more, to do more, to create more, to be more thoughtful & wise.
None of us should hope for the demise of others for the sake of our success, but rather we should use our success to inspire others as a way that they too can be successful. If your intention is to harm others in pursuit of your dreams, then you will never find your dreams realized. You must want the best for yourself, but also for those with whom you are associated. That is how the community of our humanity works best, for that is how we humans are designed to function. God did not intend, I believe, for our differences to make us isolated, but rather for them to make us more interested in one another! You can be all you can be & still let others be their fully-actualized selves too! Encourage, instill & never let your character suffer for the life you choose to live!
cherylriesauthor 