What has caused this thought to occur to me? I recently ended a relationship with someone who portrayed himself as extremely tolerant. I recognise this because I like to think I portray myself in the same way. I think we both may be wrong about ourselves.
It is not tolerant to keep badgering someone to see things ‘your way’, nor is it tolerant, however gracefully, to shrug off their lack of understanding of your feelings or views in a martyr-like manner. ‘I suppose I’m just going to have to live with you not understanding me.’
Tolerance is accepting wholeheartedly that each person has their own point of view, and not trying to impose change on that, including on oneself. Allowing the other, and yourself, myself, to feel whatever it is and not to deny or diminish the validity of those feelings. We each spend a lifetime gathering experience, and baggage, that influences how we feel and respond and whatever we feel is valid and reasonable for us at that time. Neither we nor anyone else has the right to tell us we ‘shouldn’t’ be feeling the way we do.
Tolerance of difficult feelings or situations does not mean we have to passively accept whatever it is we feel. We do not have the right to ask someone else to change something to make us more comfortable. But, we do have the choice to change our situation or ourselves. Only through being genuinely tolerant of where we are and who we are can we really recognise that we have the power to change ourselves or our attitudes. It may not be acceptable to change a situation, but it is always possible to change our attitude and relationship with the situation.
The really nice part is that through doing this for ourselves, while also being genuinely tolerant of the people around us, they too can learn to tolerate themselves and discover their own choices in life.
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves. Eric Hoffer:
