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See Your Connections With Others And Not The Differences

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When I Was In First Grade An Older Woman With Glasses Came

Down…

 To our class room and gathered a few studentsincluding myself.  She proceeded to sit all of us on a bench

and ask us a variety of questions about this or that. She toldus that we were the three smartest kids in first grade and

“gifted” and would be meeting with her weekly until wefinished elementary school. I remember thinking the entirething was funny and proceeded to give her smart ass answersto various questions. For example, she asked us what kind of food birds ate and I told her “baked potatoes” and otherstatements along those lines.

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Every Year In Each Class That I Was In Until I Finished…

elementary school that same womanwould come down and grab these two

students and take them upstairs to her officewhere she would talk to them about whatever

topics gifted students were supposed to betalking about. They had apparently been judged “gifted” in a short conversation that wehad when we were six years old and I had beenkicked out of the “gifted club” by my smart assanswers. I remember quite well that these

students seemed to feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment in having been judged giftedby this woman when they were younger. Forwhat it was worth, I felt like somewhat of afailure for having been kicked out of the giftedclub at this age.

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When I got into junior high school, this sort of separationcontinued. People began to be sorted into different math

classes based on their ability. The sorting continued andas school progressed, it got more and more pronounced.

 This is something that I saw started to separate people. The smart kids typically would not spend time with theaverage kids. The athletes would not spend time with the

non-athletes. The popular girls separated into differentgroups than the unpopular girls. All around there was atremendous amount of separation going on.

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An Interesting Thing About School Is That Our Current Education

System Is…

Focused on success and becoming someonedifferent from what we currently are. The

emphasis of education is on what we lack and how

we are different from others. We are tested in avariety of subjects and classified and separatedbased on our ability to do different subjects. Thereis a continual separation of us going on from otherpeople almost from the moment we enter school. This separation is “imposed” on us from the outside

and is something that we are quite unaware of. Atsome point, however, in addition to the educationalsystem separating us into various groups, we alsostart separating ourselves from others

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As Time Goes On There Becomes the Rich and the Poor.

We separate ourselves based on religion. We separateourselves based on where we live. Kids startseparating themselves based on social class. We

separate ourselves based on race. This separation thatis first imposed on us by the outside continues tobecome more and more pronounced as we separateourselves based on factors that we start to learn fromothers. Schools separate us and our parents and othersalso teach us how to be separate from others.

Pretty soon we are in a place where we areperfectly isolated and quite alone.

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I Am Sure That You Can…

Remember when you first entered schoolhow easy it was to make friends withvarious people. I remember this well. Infact, back when I was in kindergarten I thinkthat everyone was friends and learned to befriends with each other. Everything is new.

Kids play together and are able to celebrateand learn from each other.

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I Am Not Sure What The Point Was.

It may have been in first grade, or second grade, but therecomes a point when our separateness from others just

takes over and is like a landslide and appears to neverend. It just starts going. As we move up the ladder andget older it becomes harder and harder for us to make

friends with other people. We walk up and try and happilyspeak to strangers and are viewed with suspicion. By the

time most of our education is over, we need to make

massive efforts to relate to others.

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When We Are Small Children We Do Not Have Self-

Consciousness.At some point, however, we learn to becomevery self conscious. We become self conscious about how we are different fromothers and how others are viewing us. Whenwe become self conscious this starts draining

energy. Energy we could be putting intoconnecting with others, for example, startsgoing into comparing what is different aboutus from others. We become more and moreconcerned about what others think and thisbecomes more of a priority in many respects

than what we even think. For young childrenit is quite normal not to be self conscious andcare about what others think. Youngchildren can connect with everyone. Theysmile and say hello to the beggar on thestreet and look at everyone as their friend.Children are so totally themselves.

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It Is Incredibly Unique to Know and See People Who Are…

Able to totally be themselves. They are so rare and people who aretotally themselves know no other way to be. They are taught the

beauty of being themselves. When you think about the rare peopleyou know in your life who are themselves, I am sure you are alsothinking about some of the happier people that you know. The

happiest people out there are able to simply be themselves. They aretotally able to be themselves and unconcerned about the differences

that may exist between themselves and others. They are themselves.

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We All Have A Need to Be Happy.

 The only way to truly be happy is tosimply be yourself. This means not

fighting with who you are and who othersthink you should be. This means notresisting who you are. It means just beingwho you are. It is absolutely magical to just be yourself. Be yourself and loveevery aspect of yourself and who you

are. When you are comfortable with whoyou are, you can be comfortable withothers.

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 Your Relationship With Yourself Is Something That Determines…

your relationship with others. 

For progress in your life, the most importantthing is awareness of who you are and not an

obsession with where you believe you shouldbe. Your mind, like most minds, is likelyconditioned with an “ideal” of the sort of personyou should be. This ideal is the result of numerous judgments and separations betweenyou and others that have likely been occurring

throughout your own life. Every time you seesomeone out there who is better at this or that,who is promoted over you, who is richer ormore attractive than you, who is more wellknown than you, the concept of this ideal isactivated within you. You are constantly in a

struggle in your own mind to become thisperfect person you believe you should be.

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 There is a constant effort within most of usto become this perfect person we believewe should be. There is a conflict between

what we are and what we believe we shouldbe. Every thought and emotion that wehave is being interpreted and we have aconstant discomfort with ourselves. In

order to be happy you need to embrace theperson you are. If you are not yourself you

are constantly trying to be someone and arenever going to be happy. When you learnto accept who you are, you begin to findfreedom. To accept who you are is to be

free.

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One of the best ways I believe to be happy andfulfilled is to help others grow. The reason this

leads to so much happiness and fulfillment is due to

the fact that by helping others we learn to connectwith others and be less self conscious and seefewer differences between ourselves and others.

 This connection is a huge missing component in theway most us are taught to think in society. The

more you help others, the more you connect and

can grow. Unlike many things in the world, we allhave an equal opportunity to grow and to serve. It

does not matter what our social or physicalcondition is: We all have an equal opportunity to

help others. To truly experience growth and

happiness you need the desire for growth andcontribution