It’s when your my jaw involuntarily clenches, my spine shoots up, and the mind runs — WAIT!³ That’s my mind getting uncomfortable and defensive. If I were to see others as myself, I would not feel or be (ooh darling, there’s an age of difference between those two words!) rebellious even if only in my mind. Rebellion is conscious, an effort with an expected outcome. The natural me doesn’t rebel or hate or dislike.

To be at peace, we (I) must look at everyone with the same eyes with which we (I) look at ourselves (myself). Yes, there are people from whom I stay away, even repel (almost wrote rebel!), yet I endeavor, although often don’t, to remind myself that most of us try to do what we think is best even though it may not be. We try to correct

what we imagine is incorrect,

stop what we imagine could happen, and so on. But we could be in error, or decide to do something that, in the end, is not in the best interest of ourselves or others. Remember: everything we do, say, and think — the good, the bad, and the stinking ugly — affects us as well as others.

do we (sometimes? often?) want from others what we can not do not give ourselves?