If I Am One Hundred Percent, So Are You

When you think about the people around you, how do you measure them? Do you see them as whole, complete, fully worthy? My guess is that if you place yourself at one hundred percent, the people in your life land there too.

I spent a while hunting for the right way to express a simple idea: that everyone stands equal in the eyes of the Supreme Being, and that loving yourself and loving others turn out to be the same act. Saying "I love you" to every person I meet feels awkward, almost impossible. But I discovered a phrase I could say without flinching. "You are 100%."

The next thing I want to be able to say is, "You are worthy of love." So much of what drives people comes down to a wound: the sense of not being loved, and the belief that the way to answer that is to wound someone back.

We do terrible things to each other, and underneath most of it is a failure to love ourselves. Consider the shootings that aren't really random. Consider the rage that spills out on the road behind the wheel. Every one of those people wanted the same thing the rest of us want, which is to be loved and accepted.

Losing the love and respect of a single parent can leave a mark that never fully heals. That damage can turn outward later, aimed at a husband or wife, at children, at strangers, at the whole world. Plenty of us were raised by angry parents who unloaded that anger on whoever was smallest in the house.

And how is a parent supposed to hand a child unconditional love when no one ever handed it to them? A good deal of what children do is a reach for acceptance. Joining a gang is often exactly that reach, pointed in a direction that ends badly.

So try this. With everyone you pass today, say it silently, just to yourself: You are 100%.

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