One Love
Okay, so it does seem odd to me when someone raised in one culture tries to live as if they were raised in a very different culture, but who am I to judge.

But it does strike me as odd sometimes.

I say that because I am often drawn to a story attributed to the Cherokee because that story emphasizes our agency and the cumulative meaning of our everyday choices, adding up to life we construct as the person we become.

Which wolf am I feeding when I let my thoughts wander to how lazy or cold-hearted some other person is? And as I feed that wolf more, even if my observation is accurate, how does that impact me? Create me?

Just like loving our enemies is the true test, because it is easy to love our friends, it is easy to fall into the trap that 'being right' justifies being mean or unkind. Because that other person really is a loser or a swine my mean-spirited ridicule of him is not feeding the angry wolf.

But it is.

And it is letting that other persons meanness or arrogance or ignorance seep into our inner life, tarnishing our efforts to feed the good wolf.

For the same reasons I like another bit of wisdom, this one more in the form of a prayer, that I have seen attributed to Lao Tzu (and to Gandhi), because this thought-guide reminds me that my destiny, the end point each day or at the end of my life, my path and identity and who I am...

...this does not just happen and certainly not without my contribution...

...and it is useful to trace our own contributions back to our thoughts, what we choose to think about, how we think, the degree to which we reject a self-centered perspective and choose to think about our selves sharing a world with others,

...and how these choices about what to think about impact the words we speak in any moment and the words we come to favor and use often

...and even our ability and willingness to think about how we can choose words that hurt less without losing our capacity to be clear and honest and ourselves.

We can choose to make the less hurtful words part of our self we feed the good wolf.

And when we engage in this daily struggle over how to think and speak in a world with others like us, this impacts our actions (beyond speaking as an action), what we choose to do to make a living or in our spare time or for fun or in response to situations.

And then, these layered and embedded choices over time create habits of the heart that define our character and create our path by walking it.