No Less

I always thought that experiences change people. Hard times make you reevaluate your situation. Losing someone closes makes you realize who is and isn't important to you. What battles should be fought and which ones you should surrender. Where your focus should be in the small decisions you make everyday. How you should treat every person you interact with. With love, kindness, understanding, patience and with the drive to lift them up regardless of how you may feel about them. This may be more of an exception than a rule. I know too well the cuts and bruises caused by those who I have helped pull out of the muck of hard times. To say that I've never been guilty of this myself would be pretentious and wildly inaccurate, but I definitely make a daily conscious effort to omit things from my life like telling small lies as well as big ones, talking badly about someone unless they are present, so as to be held accountable for what I say, putting down someone else's strongly held belief (religious, political or otherwise) simply because I don't like it, treating someone badly because they treat me badly and other things that I commonly observe in the people that I interact with as I walk through life. Yes, I am being judgmental, if you want to call it that, but I don't think it's wrong to expect more from yourself and the people around you on a daily basis. To expect them to go the extra mile. For you to console that person you don't want to simply because you know what it means to hurt. To share a meal with someone you know couldn't afford to. There is no reason to expect less than what is needed in times of hurt, pain or weakness from yourself or anyone else. Support, love, friendship, and understanding. We have all been through it. Some of us had friends along to help us through it. Some did not. Being abandoned by people you love in times of need, going to prison, losing a child, being lied to, struggling to feed yourself for a period of time. These are all things that you should use to be more loving, kind, understanding, patient and uplifting than you had the capacity to before. To make you a better human. You and I are stronger than that. You and I both should expect nothing less.