Peace

To be at peace with others, we must seek peace within ourselves. To be at peace within ourselves, we must seek peace with others.  This is a mutual effort.  In seeking peace with others, they will (eventually) seek peace with us.  To welcome peace from others is to grant peace to both them and ourselves.  Caring peace is the reduction of negative stress in our relationships.  If we begin to listen to others, to resolve conflicts with all parties in mind, then the goal of peace can possibly be achieved.

Opposite: Harsh conflict, resolving conflict with only personal goals in mind.

Conflicts and relational stresses are inevitable.  Do we try to ignore conflicts, allowing them to fester, or do we approach them gently?  Do we manipulate people to try to get them to do what we want, or directly speak to issues?  Do we blow up at others and then hope they don’t bring it up again?  Or do we firmly but gently speak to the issues in our relationships, listening to others’ needs and then seeking to resolve them with both parties’ needs met?

Joy In Others

In ancient Scriptures, “joy” is an important value.  Some speak of the joy of creation, or the joy of gratitude.  But one aspect of joy that is often neglected is joy in others.  To rejoice in another is to have one’s heart leap when they appear, to take pleasure in conversing with them, to join with them in their personal joys.  Joy is not only a personal feeling, it is a communal sharing.  Joy is essential to love, for who wants a relationship to lack joy?

Opposite: Envy of other’s good fortune, negative response to another

Think of a person we dislike.  When we converse with that person, do we find our eyes avoiding them, our voice containing irritation, an attempt to get away from them?  How can we express a more positive interaction?  Now pick another person whom we neither especially love nor dislike.  When we think of them, do we focus on the things we especially enjoy about them?  What good things about others can we think about, without considering the negative?  If we meditate on the positive, then we can more easily express joy when we next see them.

Self Control

Our natural instinct is rarely the right actions to follow for other’s sake.  Our natural instinct is to love those who love us, but it is also to hurt those that we perceive as hurting us.  And maybe to hurt them a little more.  We may think with our desires and drives.  Self-control is taking time to consider the best course of action.  And loving self-control is considering what would be beneficial for another in a certain circumstance.  To love is to take time to think what is good for all, not just to react.

Opposite: To be impulsive and to defend that impulse no matter who we hurt.

Do we ever take time to really meditate about what others need or how we can help them?  Is love only something we do on impulse?  Are our impulses mostly self-serving or other-serving?  How can we create habits that would assist others on a regular basis?  

Appreciating Difference

At first this may seem like the opposite of “love your neighbor as yourself.”  While we may begin love by seeing others as ourselves, we mature in love by recognizing that others want similar things in different ways.  We all need food, but we can’t all eat the same food. We all want respect, but we may understand respect in different ways.  We all want to be loved, but we may understand love in different ways.  This is why God made most of us desire to be attached to the opposite sex—to learn that love is expressed through difference, as well as through similarity.

Opposite: Insisting that others’ needs will be met only in our way; rejecting others because of how they meet their needs.

Do we look at others as just extension of ourselves, or as unique people in their own right?  Do we see the solutions we found to our problems the only solution to that problem or one of a set of solutions that other’s might find helpful?  Do we manipulate people to take a certain path “for their own good” or give them the freedom to figure out what is good for themselves?  Do we command or advise?