Perspective: Staying true to principles
Perspective From The Olympian July 17, 2010
By Jan Spiller
How tempting it can be to claim hold to a principle because its on a membership card, or because it sounds good, or because one wants it to be true. But doing so produces only a phantom belief system. It is my view that a regular and attentive "check-in" can tell us what principles that we claim to hold true are truly ours.
I recently found myself looking once again at: "The inherent worth and dignity of every person." It is the first of seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote.
When first reading it in the Olympia congregation’s literature several years ago I thought, "Yes, I believe that to be true." How quickly my mind linked it with Thomas Jefferson’s "self-evident truth" that "all men are created equal." Even my childhood catechism’s "we are all children of God" seemed to fit well with it.
In a more recent check-in, I once again found that when I take time to thoughtfully consider a principle I hold true, it will sift its way down through the many thoughts and notions I have about it. Eventually, it brings me to my core to ask: What does this really mean in your life? How do these words reflect what you say you believe about yourself, others and the world? Such questions, I believe, challenge me to be truthful for the purpose of being true to myself.
I must lay on the table that there are times I can find myself feeling pretty righteous about ‘bestowing’ worthiness to someone, especially to a ‘them’. (And then feeling quite virtuous for doing so.) Then there are those times I find myself singing along with Charlie Schultz’s piano-playing Linus with his "I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand." So the word ‘inherent’ asks me if I believe worth and dignity are to be assigned on a case by case basis.
In truth, I see there are times I do want to make exceptions. Oh how I want to argue my case for exclusions – like for the two teenagers out for a lark who killed a homeless man sleeping on a park bench. Yet, at the same time, and from deeper still, rises a sense of knowingness in me that, in truth, worth and dignity are for all or no one.
So for me, a step in the living out of this principle I hold to be true is staying in touch with my willingness to separate a doer from his or her deed. My desire and efforts to cultivate such willingness is something that tells me what this principle means in my life.
A friend recently shared a recollection that struck me as so aptly reflecting the living out of a belief in the worth and dignity of oneself and the people in one’s life. A retired teacher, she recounted that in her 10th year of teaching she found herself at the start of the school year with a girl "who was nothing but trouble."
"I had never had anyone like her. Or such dislike for a student as I did for her. I knew I was in for a really bad year.
"I decided I would try really hard to like her. But nothing I did, nothing I said, worked. She actually got worse. I was really at my wit’s end. I honestly felt myself beginning to hate the girl. And I felt awful about that.
"I decided my only option was to change the way I thought about her. I had to do it. For both of us. So every day – and I mean every day, every day without fail – I made myself find something positive about her. Anything, however small. I didn’t tell her what I was doing. It wasn’t about changing her. It was about changing me. Changing my mind about her."
The friend recalled that as her mind about the girl changed, her interactions with the girl changed. She really couldn’t explain how it happened, she said.
"But by the end of the school year that girl was not only my best student, she was my favorite student. It was a truly unforgettable experience."
Remarkable, I thought. If one looks, if one listens, are we not shown what is so?
Jan Spiller is retired, a member of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation and on the Interfaith Works Board of Directors. Perspective is coordinated by Interfaith Works in cooperation with The Olympian. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by Interfaith Works or The Olympian.