Encouragement

​I guess I like to talk about it and write about it as it seems to be my particular bent.  Everyone needs it.  No one can really live without it.  Yet there is not enough of it.  Encouragement.
I know what it is like to be with people who have seemingly nothing good to say about anything or anyone.  All they see are problems.  There are problems and I would be burying my head in the sand to imagine otherwise.  But there are not just problems.
I do believe there is an answer for every situation.  But having said that, I was reading something this morning that really resonated with me.  The guy said sometimes the answer is “I don’t know.”  I can have a multitude of ideas.  I can spruk what I think, but that is very different to knowing.  I am not all knowing.  I reckon if I was it would do my head in.  Thankfully often I do have an answer - but I will not pretend it is always.
I guess that is where my faith comes in.  I do not know everything but I do know He is trustworthy.  I will do my dardest to find an answer but sometimes the best I can do is empathize.  Someone said on tv that if you lose compassion you lose empathy.  I do not want to go there.
Someone once said to me “you treat everyone the same.”  In thinking about it I reckon I do.  I guess it comes from realizing that from the highest in the land to the lowest, we are all people and have the same needs.  I totally believe in showing due respect to a position, but the position is occupied by a person, and that person has the same needs as me.
One of those needs is encouragement.  It is so easy to criticize, but none of us can survive only on a diet of criticism.  I have had a couple of letters to the editor published.  They were about very different people.  One I supported and the other I did not.  Yet I saw some good stuff in both of them and told them so in the letter.  I have mentioned it before but it is like the Foxtel ad, “there is good in bad people and bad in good people.”  I will do what I can to make the good the dominant feature.
I don’t get off on being put down all the time and being treated like a loser.  Sometimes I need to change, but to me there is a way to promote the change and making me feel only bad about myself does not cut it for me.
I will always try to encourage.  I may not agree with someone and will say why if given the opportunity.  Love and pulling down are mutually exclusive to me.  I think the best I can do is build someone up and hope they will do the same for me because I know I need it.