You Can Find a Reason
By Bernadette A. Moyer

You can find a reason to love just like you can find a reason to hate, a reason to give and a reason to take. We can all find reasons to justify our actions if that is what we decide to do. Love is a choice and so is hatred.

Imagine any relationship where you are presented with a “list” of all the things that you did wrong or were deemed unattractive to another person? A list that documents your “flaws” and “shortcomings” this “list” was presented at the culmination of the relationships. I don’t know many relationships, no matter how loving that could withstand such a list.

Nor do I fully comprehend why anyone would take the time to create pages upon pages of their grievances. (This actually happened to a friend where one of their family members took the time to write down all the things that they deemed wrong with them.)

Needless to say it didn’t make anything better… I wonder if the list maker ever even thought about how it would be received and if they did what they expected the outcome to be? And if they were presented with a “list” how they would respond?

What I do know is that the same efforts that went into creating the” list” of flaws could have just as easily been the same energy that went into creating a list of love. The same effort that goes into hurting people can just as easily be the effort that goes into loving them.

There is a lot of talk in our society today about “anti-violence” toward women and several anti-bullying campaigns. One of the ads recently came across as though we are expected to love every single person and anything less was deemed as less than noble. As human beings we are drawn to the people that we like and we aren’t going to like/love everyone.

As kids we were taught that if we didn’t like someone to just stay away from them, I still think that works? Right? Not every person out there will be someone that we welcome into our lives. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stay away from people that are not good for us or bring out the worst in us.

We are a judgment based society, we judge people we judge them by how they look and how they speak, and we judge them by their actions and their lack of actions. We judge people by their education or their lack of education. We judge them by their religious beliefs and their political views. We all have our own yardsticks on how we decide to measure others. The problem is that our yardstick is based on our views and in an ever changing world people change, society changes and we change.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa

We can all find reasons …

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