Anchor Point Counseling Center

The concept of tolerance is a natural result of practicing “non-judgment.”  This quality of “allowing” requires practice. It may be useful to consider the opposite of tolerance in the social, cultural, and/or religious context.  The opposite of tolerance would be to persecute or have an attitude of intolerance.  Isn’t that interesting, most people recognize and reject persecution yet how often do we practice intolerance?

Therein lays the dilemma.  Socially we are tolerant of different attitudes and beliefs…most of the time.  Culturally we are tolerant of different ethnicities mostly out of respect for their origin.  Yet religiously, we sometimes notice, intolerance and even persecution rearing up more often than we care to admit.  Occasionally, this manifests itself in the simple act of complaining about our style of worship.  In a perfect world, we would find God in any and every style of worship.

Non-judgement is the cornerstone of compassionate communication.  Here is an idea whose time has come and none too soon.  Imagine unconditional love, imagine non-judgement are these concepts impossible for humans?  The principle of unconditional love requires that we suspend judgment so that we can love without expectation.

Translated from Latin, a legal term called “quid pro quo” means literally “something for something.”  A slang term for this is “you scratch my back I will scratch your back.”  I offer this up as an alternative or dialectic to unconditional love and non-judgment.  In other words, the expectation in a relationship is the “something” that makes love conditional.  I hope that is not too great of a leap for your logic to follow.

There is a quote in the “big book of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)” and it goes like this, “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.”  This is a very wise statement.  A variation to this is from Buddhism, “The root of all suffering is desire.”  Now, this may seem to be two very separate ideas yet I will try to connect them.

For example, if you desire chocolate and, alas, there is none to be found in the house… you suffer.  If you wish things were not as they are (i.e. poverty, hunger, recession, etc.) you suffer.  Now, bring forth the quote, “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.” Acceptance is an antidote to desire, therefore; it is an antidote to suffering.

The concept of tolerance is a natural result of practicing “non-judgment.”  This quality of “allowing” requires practice. It may be useful to consider the opposite of tolerance in the social, cultural, and/or religious context.  The opposite of tolerance would be to persecute or have an attitude of intolerance.  Isn’t that interesting, most people recognize and reject persecution  yet how often do we practice intolerance?

Therein lays the dilemma.  Socially we are tolerant of different attitudes and beliefs…most of the time.  Culturally we are tolerant of different ethnicities mostly out of respect for their origin.  Yet religiously, we sometimes notice, intolerance and even persecution rearing up more often than we care to admit.  Occasionally, this manifests itself in the simple act of complaining about our style of worship.  In a perfect world, we would find God in any and every style of worship.

To begin with, it is important to distinguish between empathy from sympathy. Empathy is often confused with sympathy.  To differentiate the two we can go to Google and ask for the definition of empathy.  Google search reveals, “Empathy is the ability to understand and share another being's feelings.”  “Although empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably, a subtle variation in ordinary usage can be detected. To empathize is to respond to another's perceived emotional state by experiencing feelings of a similar sort.”  Sympathy implies an extra measure of detachment even a “top down” approach.  The power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble is commiseration. We don’t want to confuse this with empathy.