How can we best love our neighbors? Dr. Joshua Loth Liebman, author of best-selling inspirational book Peace of Mind, says that “we best show our love for our neighbors when we achieve an inner tolerance for the uniqueness of others, when we resist the temptation of private imperialism.”
v Who are private imperialists?
a. Those who make those nearest and dearest to them pay tribute all of their lives to their tyrannical decrees;
b. The father who forces his artistic son into his business
c. The mother who rivets her daughter to her service by chains of pity and guilt, subtly refusing the daughter a life of her own.
In contrast to such totalitarian attitudes, we show love to those closest to us when we permit them to be themselves rather than to submit to the strait-jacket of our dominating desires, wrote Dr. Liebman.
v Tolerance means also the acceptance of the essence and uniqueness of others. “This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. . . . So is it with human beings.”
v Intolerance is an indicator of the uncertainty within oneself about the rightness of one’s inner pattern. “He who is sure of himself is deeply willing to let others be themselves. He who is unstable in his own character must reassure himself by trying to compress others into his mold.”
v Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another’s beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them. It even goes to the extent of defending an opponent when their rights are assailed.*
v Tolerance is not moral laxity or easy deviation from established principles. If we say apathetically, “One notion is as good as another,” we are not being tolerant; we are merely being lazy.
v Tolerance is the bulwark of social and individual liberty, the guarantor of a hundred civil rights, and the chief element in any cultural advance that a society may expect to make. Democracy is the principle of tolerance extended into the sphere of politics.
Source: Joshua Loth Liebman, Peace of Mind. Simon and Schuster, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020 U.S.A.
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Personal Remark: I like this one. Every living being on earth deserves the moral right to express themselves---regardless of their beliefs.
