Human beings are built to know and access the ideal within them. Ironically, this often flies in the face of their own experiences in life. But still, people search because deep down they know there is something better than their current reality. Some consider idealism to be naive, but this is the force that has pushed people forward for millennia.

Some people think God can’t exist because He’s no-where to be found in war or in the suffering of the world. Nevertheless, I think God is present in that small push from within that wants to create the ideal despite everything.

Believing in Goodness Makes It Blossom

Believing in the ideal buried somewhere inside of you is courageous and important. What if you gave up? Have you ever had the experience of choosing to believe in someone even though they were being less than “perfect”? If you have, then you might have seen them blossom because someone chose to see their goodness instead of their limitations.

Paradoxically, it is “troubled nature” that is the illusion. If you see who the person really is, their true nature comes out. I don’t say this lightly. I work in social services and have seen the face of suffering up close. Despite that, I do believe there is a higher innate knowledge of a greater reality that anyone can tap into.

When you believe in the ideal, you get excited by the ideal! You start asking, “How are things meant to be?”

The process of growth can’t be ignored!

We all want everything to work out perfectly first time around. The Principle of Creation states that growth happens through three orderly stages: formation, growth and completion. If you want to build the ideal in your own life or the world, there are no short cuts!

Young children must establish a healthy foundation to learn; no-one can go from zero to 100 when it comes to emotional growth; maturity and the development of wisdom take time and experience. We are so impatient!

Sorrow can breed kindness

Yesterday, I heard Naomi Shihab Nye read her poem, Kindness. She wrote it while on her honeymoon in Mexico. They were travelling on a bus that was attacked. They watched a man being killed and all their possessions were taken. She waited, fearful and exhausted at a café while her husband hitchhiked to the next city to apply for new papers.

Sitting at the café she heard a voice speak to her from the other side of the town square. She wrote down the words she heard and that became the poem, Kindness. Naomi explained that she didn’t write the poem; she received it.

The words speak to the irrepressible spirit within that seeks love and the ideal. It reveals that wisdom is formed out of the things we grow through.  Here is an excerpt of the poem:

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”

Discover your capacity to love

Our journey in life is often fraught with difficulty. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing! It’s through experience and in relationship with others that we discover our capacity to love, and the wisdom that it brings. It’s how we achieve the perfection that Jesus spoke about when he said,

 “You must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.”

That seems like a tall order at best and something way beyond the reach of the average person. But is it?

Only the heart can be perfect `

I believe perfection of the heart is possible if we are not afraid of the word itself. Rev. Sun Myung Moon unpacked this word when he said:

“Perfection is possible when the subject partner (the initiating partner in a relationship) values the object partner completely, and vice-versa.”

By this simple definition you can be confident that you can achieve the “perfection” that Jesus spoke of. If you can love someone absolutely, and your way of being is such they can love you absolutely in return, you have reached perfection in the realm of heart. Then the only thing that remains is to increase the circle of that love to more people.

It’s easy to love the people you can easily appreciate, but can you also love people who are vastly different from you? The ideal is that we value all people. Surely, we have that capacity. If you think of the model of Christ, that would be true for him. Why couldn’t that be true for me and you as well?