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I still remember all those sleepy mornings several years ago when my family would wake up before 5am to eat breakfast and my brother and I would prepare to go to school. There wasn’t much to do way back then. There were no cellphones or social media sites to distract us, and there were no decent TV shows to watch that early in the morning.
During all those years of mine in grade school and highschool, we had a small wooden plaque hanging over our dinner table and it had a poem written on it, the Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann. That was the only thing I could read in the dining room all those years, and I learned some incredibly valuable lessons from it. I’d like to share what I learned with you here.
Three Valuable Lessons I Learned from the Desiderata
Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
1. Respect everyone and everything.
Be gentle with yourself. There’s a lot of us who are very harsh with ourselves and sometimes we can’t seem to forgive our own failings and imperfections. Remember that none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes, and that includes those leaders and celebrities we idolize. They too have their failings and insecurities that they can’t show on screen. Don’t judge yourself too harshly for your flaws and mistakes. You have a right to be here, and you’re just as important as the stars that shine above.
Of course, I understood that line about us being no less than the trees and the stars very differently. If I am equal to the trees and the stars, then that means the trees and the stars are also equal to me.
Whenever I go hiking, I inevitably see pieces of trash on the trail, names carved on trees and boulders, and cigarette butts thrown among the flowers and trees. Most of us think we humans are somehow “higher” and more important beings than the plants and animals around us. We aren’t. They are just as important as we are, and that is why we must avoid harming others around us, the plants, animals, soil, rivers, and other things in nature.
This is like practicing the “Leave no Trace” principle when hiking or traveling. Appreciate the world, and don’t harm the things that live in it.
Listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
2. Don’t look down on other people.
You know how great people don’t treat their waiters badly? That’s a tip we should all follow, and not just because they’d spit on your food if you’re a terrible person.
Those of us who are better educated or more affluent sometimes have a tendency to look down on others who are poorer and less educated, and that’s something we need to avoid. We must never judge others as “inferior” just because they have a smaller paycheck or their job titles aren’t as impressive as ours.
Listen to others, including those who we THINK are dull and ignorant. We may not necessarily agree with or want to follow other people’s advice, but we’ll never know the valuable things they know unless we learn to listen.
Everyone has their own unique skills, knowledge, talents, and nuggets of wisdom gained from life experience and that makes them valuable too. Everyone, including beggars and the mentally ill, deserves respect.
Note: People who need to be respected includes you, so never let others abuse and disrespect you.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
3. Stop comparing yourself to others.
We’ll have to face a lot of competition all throughout life. After competing for higher grades we’ll have to compete with other applicants for the job we want, we have to compete with our coworkers on who gets promoted, and we have to compete with other businesses and market factors if we want our business to succeed. In less serious cases, we’ll compare our skills against others in the hobbies we like (art, sports, etc.) including the videogames we play in our free time.
If we’re good, we’ll usually win. Unfortunately, we can’t win all the time and a long losing streak can make us discouraged and stressed. That could turn into a big obstacle when we’re so close to succeeding at a certain goal.
So what’s one way to reduce our stress levels when we lose?
We must always remember that there will ALWAYS be someone better. This is true even if we’re already “the best” in our field. There will be people who have worked far harder, and people who were just really lucky that day. It happens. Things won’t always go our way and others will eventually outshine and outplay us. The faster we learn to accept that, the easier it will be for us to get up when we fall and try again.
Aside from that, we also should avoid letting our successes and victories go to our head. Just because we may be better than others at some things, that doesn’t mean we should look down on them for being less knowledgeable or less skilled. After all, they are better than us in other things and they know a lot of things that we don’t.
(On a side note, I’m a gamer and this advice has been really helpful in multiplayer games. Don’t be toxic when you lose, and if you’re actually pretty skilled then don’t be toxic to teammates that can’t keep up. Always respect others. This applies to all sorts of relationships too, like at work or with your friends and family.)
There’s a lot of valuable lessons that you can gain from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata, and I am very glad I learned a few of them growing up. If you want to read the full poem, you can search for it on the internet as it’s freely available online.
Try reading the poem yourself. Reflect on the lessons and you might just find a few things that you can use to improve your life.