February 2005

—Ernest Holmes

Everyone wishes to have a friend, to be a friend, and everyone wants to be happy. Surely, it is intended that we all live together in peace and prosperity. There is a way by which this can be brought about.

First of all, we must do away with all prejudice and learn to respect each other. We must come to know the needs of others and to realize that at the base of everyone’s life there is a sincere desire to love and to be loved.

We all have casually met some person and said: “If I knew this person better I am sure I would admire him.” Perhaps we are just a little too withdrawn. Possibly there is not quite enough give-and-take in our manner of living. Yet we are all so much alike inside, we all do want people to like us and we want to feel that we enter into their lives in a vital way. We all have similar needs, hopes, and longings. This does not mean that we do not have different opinions, for we are all individuals. Each is a person in his own right, but unity does not mean uniformity. Basically this would indicate we should get along together in immediate personal family life, as well as in the entire human family.

For instance, there are hundreds of different churches in the United States, but they all believe in one God. We have great political parties, but each believes in the United States and all the States form one great Union. We should be concerned not with that which divides, but with that which unites! And the solution of this problem, whether personal or international, begins right in our own mind.

Have we kindness for each other? Are we flexible enough to know that everyone does not have to think alike in order to live together harmoniously? Are we able to put ourself in the other person’s place, and overlook the irritations of life and reach across all differences of opinion to the common ground on which we all stand?

We all live and move and have our being in one God. It is this kind of understanding that the world needs, and the family needs. Perhaps we need it more than at any other time in history. From it alone can come a sense of mutual security and well-being between peoples and nations. But this has to start with the individual and go out through the family first.

Of course, then, the place to begin is with the self and with the family, and we should ask ourselves each day: “Do I have more tolerance than I had yesterday? Have I a little more understanding of other people’s needs? Have I developed a greater sympathy?” If we have, then I am sure we are on the right track, we are headed in the right direction.

The rosebush is not a grapevine. But the rosebush and the grapevine are rooted in one common soil and they draw their being from it. And there is plenty of room for all varieties of expression and for the various groups, both in the home and in the world. Different thoughts and ideas are inherent to the nature of life. We need this variety. But back of it all we need a sympathetic understanding of others.

Certainly it is not necessary in the immediate family life that each member think and act alike. There may be four sons and four daughters and each may go into a different profession. This is exactly as it should be. But there must be a spirit of cooperation through the whole family which promotes the well-being of each member; permitting each to be a little different, while at the same time finding common purposes back of their united lives.

And so it is with the larger family of the human race. The thing that shall establish unity is that each family group of the race shall respect the individual differences of others, while at the same time cooperating with them. We each have an individual part to play in the great scheme of things, and the most valuable thing anyone can do is to be a little more certain each day that he is meeting life with a deeper understanding and sympathy for others, with a greater sense of love. This is not merely an idle sentiment, or a wishful wishing; it is practical living! More and more of our great leaders in education, religion, and science are coming to accept this position, and they are right.

Those of us who have come to believe in the creative power of thought, and that we are living in a spiritual universe right now, should say to ourselves every day: “I believe in the union of God with man. I believe in the need that we all have for each other, and I believe in the Spirit that is acting through me in love and in harmony with those around me. I believe that the Spirit in others is reacting to me in love and in harmony. I believe we are all one family in God, and that God is working in each of us in such a way that there will be produced a better family, a better nation, a better world. I rejoice in the thought that all people live in God and must of necessity come to live together harmoniously.” •

Excerpted from 10 Ideas That Make a Difference by Ernest Holmes.

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