Most of us have a hard time staying tolerant of others and wish we could be a bit less judgmental.

I am not referring here to our opinions of those who are actively cruel to other people.

Instead, I mean the ways  we judge people who seem to afflict us, though they are not directly hurting us or others.

Nonetheless, we feel offended, thinking them perhaps superficial, unintelligent, boring, vain, or clueless in whatever realms we wish they would find a clue.

Of course, some of us are rather proud of these judgments, saying that we do not “suffer fools well.”

This, in turn, provides an ample opportunity for other people to judge us as tactless, self-important cynics.

Why change this?

First, disdain polarizes discourse, leading to the inability of people to see any wisdom in the perspective of the other person.

(Election seasons provide abundant exposure to the ways that people stereotype opposition and thereby block the chance to learn from each other. )

Another cost is the tendency for harsh judgments of others to seep into our close relationships, even those with our children and spouses.

A more trivial but pervasive cost is that intolerance tends to rain on our days with  a frigid sprinkle of small irritations.

The most unrecognized cost of such contempt is that intolerance blocks a person’s growth.

More often than not it masks the potential transition from poor self-esteem to gratitude for ones gifts, which then allows for appreciative acknowledgement of the unique gifts of others.

In other words, those who can most easily find the gifts in others are also those most humbly grateful for their own talents.

The humility part stems from our recognition that none of us made ourselves who we are, but are instead challenged with the question of what to do with who we are.

Thus grateful, we are free to notice the differing knacks of others.

When we notice deficiencies in some dimension of another person, it provides a chance to realize that we are perhaps particularly talented in that particular dimension.

This in turn frees us to find the areas in which the same person may exceed us in ability.

When someone throws you the opportunity to experience disdain, convert it into a clue for self-appreciation.

Then, return the favor by celebrating the differences among us, the variations that fill the world with millions of sparks of light, all shining a bit differently.

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