Pet Theory: Our hearts and minds grow in proportion to ...

Reflections on how to love God and neighbor with heart, soul, mind, and strength ... 

I have a pet theory: Our hearts and minds grow in proportion to how many people we honestly admire. Sometimes I dream of achieving great things, and work towards them. But even if I should achieve my wildest dreams, I hope I never become so full of myself that I don't admire other people more. It would be so small. Some people seem embarrassed to admire other people, as though admiring someone is unbecoming, or somehow lessens their own prestige. I couldn't disagree more. Admiration -- looking at another person, finding their excellence, recognizing it, being truly glad for it -- is the kind of stuff that expands our hearts. And as it expands, it grows stronger, more able to love. Our capacity to love, to take delight in the world, grows larger. Permitting ourselves to enjoy an honest delight is refreshing. And with this permission we grant ourselves, and with practice, the eye becomes more capable of seeing the good in others. Our understanding of other human beings, their thoughts and their accomplishments, increases. Striving to appreciate everything that makes someone worthy of notice, worthy of respect -- this builds in our mind habits that will be put to good service with other people as we go along in life.

Jesus teaches us to consider love as the foundation of what is good. But love has been sentimentalized and trivialized to the point where people hesitate to speak of it as a topic worthy of serious consideration. Admiration has likewise been corrupted into fawning or obsession; it is time to reclaim a more healthy view of it, with a rightful place for esteem and enthusiasm. It seems to me that admiration is one of the more basic aspects of love, one worthy of remembering, and one worthy of practice.

We start as children by admiring people we see as heroes. And we begin by admiring those who are easy to admire. But as we mature in the skill, we become able to recognize the good wherever we find it, and be honestly glad for it.