Love everyone? ..
Oh, these neighbors ... Well, how to love them: all at once? Or take turns? Start with those who are smarter and more beautiful? Or those with whom it is convenient to get to work together? And where to get it, love for people? After all, you cannot order your heart.
Or will you order?
No need to expect from a person that he will be the same with all people. If a person behaves the same way with friends and enemies, relatives and neighbors, acquaintances and strangers, then we are dealing with a psycho or a robot. Such a person is inadequate, does not know how to adapt to the situation, does not make "correction for the wind." Do not bite yourself because at the sight of one acquaintance the heart beats joyfully, and you run into his arms, and at the sight of another it feels like you have bitten a snail and you want to hide in the nearest gateway. And where, I ask you, would be the place for heroism? Where would we then strain, and work on ourselves, and hide our emotions, rolled into a tube, in the back pocket of our underpants? You should take your uneven attitude towards the colorful world as part of that bouquet that is uniquely beautiful and defies standardization.
Let's translate the question into a practical plane. A working day awaits you, but you can’t stand your neighbor on the desktop. What to do? Leave to work as if you were going to war, knowing that you are in for a fight. After hastily drinking tea and taking the subway or trolleybus, pray that God will give you strength and reason to behave correctly and evenly. “Teach me to act directly and reasonably with each of my neighbors, without condemning or grieving anyone,” so prayed the Optina elders, so pray you too. Saint Ambrose of Optina said that if there is no love, then through work you need to do the work of love, and God, seeing your labors, will give you love.
For example, your hated neighbor has untied laces or a shirt straightened out of his pants. A matter of love is not to let him be a laughing stock for the team, but to quietly suggest what to fix in clothes. Or a folder with documents fell on the floor with him (her). Help lift, bend, the crown will not fall. Thus, by deeds of love, done through force, you can soften the heart of a former enemy and attract God's love to yourself. Give me money, give me a ride, congratulate you on your birthday, intercede if you can and if there is a need. And all this - through force, according to duty, with a kind of violence against his obstinate and unloving heart. Only on this path can you open the experience of inner reconciliation with those with whom you were inwardly hostile.
It's another matter if someone is looking for your special affection, wants to open your heart and expects the same from you. If you do not feel in this person a friend and a careful keeper of your secrets, then do not rush to enter into friendly intimacy. Let there be thousands living in the world with you, said Serafim Sarovsky, but reveal your secret from one thousand to one. A person has always been unreliable, and today's person, all the more, may not keep your secret, behave rudely with what is tender and dear to you. In order not to enlarge the wounds, it is better to look for a certain distance in communication with people around you - of course, without contempt and arrogance.
If people expect from you special participation in their life, compassion, advice, and you don’t at all find in yourself the ability to help them - get out. Get away gently, trying not to offend anyone even with a glance, because not everyone can listen to someone else's secret and not spoil from it. Know your measure.
It would be nice to be like air - always needed and always invisible. Do not impose on anyone, do not suck out blood from anyone and at the same time come in time to the place where you are needed just at that time. This is a great talent.
The Monk Anthony the Great said: from a neighbor is life and from a neighbor is death. The great God, by the measure of His attitude towards you, chooses the measure of your attitude towards those around you. Since God tolerates and loves and is charitable to us, we must learn to tolerate, love, and do good. Help us, Lord.
Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
