So here you are, trying to cope with this person across the table.  He may be angry with you, or with a politician … or with life.

If you are the target, it’s pretty difficult in the moment to stay calm.  But perhaps an expanse of time will allow us to see newly.

Jack Kornfield, a teacher of Buddhist perspective, has something to say about this:

Each of us can find our own way to sense the underlying goodness in others.  One way is to shift the frame of time, imagining the person before us as a small child, still young and innocent …

Or, instead of moving back in time, we can move forward.  We can visualize the person at the end of their life, lying on their deathbed, vulnerable, open …

Here is the earlier and later man available to you and me:

Trying to figure things out

Trying to let go of accumulated woe

***

Do I have such eyes to see such things?

Or is the only image the one that stands before me?