Who? Me?

Today I am grateful for the hope that comes when people share their pain and their joy with one another. I am also grateful for lamplight.

As I exercised this morning, I considered this quote from Carl Jung:

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." 

It reminds me of this saying too:

"When we have one finger pointing at someone else, we have three fingers pointing back at us.

I am the only person I can change, and that can be a tough job. Other people help though, sometimes by being a confidant and hearing me out as I process my own thoughts and feelings and reach some clarity. (Thank you to all my confidants.) 

And at other times, people help me in the way that Carl Jung speaks of here. They may be strangers or people I know quite well. They help me reflect on things like being judgmental, self-righteous anger, self-pity, perfectionism, selfishness,  and more. They reflect back to me those things that I continually need to work on. 

Who? Me? Yeah, me. I am a work in progress. We are all works in progress. I will never be free of my defects, but I can try to have fewer flare ups, fewer forays into the ugliness of things like trying to prove I am right or stinging judgment of a circumstance because I somehow would have done it better.

To read more about Carl Jung and this idea, here is a post from earlier this year.

As I conclude, I return to my reason for writing--to help me live gratefully each day and to share in that gratitude. While there remain things about me that I hope to change, gratefulness helps me more fully embrace the things about me that don't need changing. And when I do that for myself, I am more likely to accept those around me as well.

Onward!