Dear readers,
While I was sitting and thinking about the prologue for the month of October 2016, I receive a WhatsApp from a dear friend who sent me the following story:
A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning having breakfast the young wife is watching her neighbor hanging up laundry on the washing line. “This laundry does not look especially clean to me” she said. “Does she not know how to properly wash her laundry? Maybe she needs a better washing powder.” Her husband looks outside but remains silent. Each time when the neighbor hangs up her laundry the young wife makes the same remark.
About one month later the woman sees a beautiful clean laundry hanging on the line and with a surprise says to her husband: “Look, she finally learned how to wash properly! I am wondering who told her how to?” The husband replied: “This morning I got up early and cleaned our windows.”
It is like that also in our lives. What we perceive looking at others depends on how clean our windows are through which we have a look at things.
What do you see when you are looking at your fellow human? Are we looking with benevolence through a window that is clean or through one that is clouded and stained by preconceptions and envy which never make our fellow human appear unsoiled?
Kind regards,
Wolfram Laube