There’s good in everyone.

They say to love your enemies, but no one tells you how to do it. It’s easy to think nice thoughts about difficult people when you’re alone, but how do you love the annoying work colleague, you know the one who’s like a shiver looking for a spine to run up. We’re supposed to find the best in people, but how do you do it? How do find the best in a person that even telemarketers hang up on?

Sometimes you can remove difficult people from your life, and sometimes that’s exactly the right thing to do, BUT, on the other hand……Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes they’re your boss in a job you need. Sometimes they’re a brother-in-law, family members and you don’t want to lose touch with your sister. Sometimes they’re an ex and you need to co parent. Sometimes they move in next door. Sometimes they’re on the other end of an important service call. You get the point.

And in any case, can’t we do better than create a cocoon of people we like? As Socrates said in Peaceful Warrior,“Those who are hardest to love need it the most.” They need it. WE need it. It makes us better person to stretch beyond the safety of people who ignite us.

Think of it this way. Every act of love brings light to the world. If loving your family and friends lights up a room, imagine how far reaching the light, deep within and out to the corners of the earth, when you break through the shell of familiarity and love a stranger or beat down a wall and love someone you dislike.

The world desperately needs the sort of love that stretches to the moon and back and collects all the strays, monsters, foes and nemeses on its way. The question remains- yes, but how do you find the beauty in the beast?

Let’s get practical here. How do you see the best in people acting their worst?

EVERY person has some redeeming qualities. I mean everyone, by virtue of being alive, has some goodness in them. This includes global terrorists, Vladimir Putin, Lance Armstrong, Osama Bin Ladin and yes it even includes politicians. My philosophy is that everyone is basically good but really, really scared. Hence the many strange choices WE make.

Mother Theresa said, “Everybody has something good inside them. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there.”

Take as an example the movie, Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood playing the most hate filled character imaginable. And yet we love him. We root for him. We love him because we want to find something redeeming in his character. He treats his Asian neighbors so badly and yet they see it. After he saves the teenage boy next door from a local gang, the boy’s sister says to him, “You’re a better man to him than our own father was. You’re a good man.” What is this goodness she sees?

Maybe it’s his HONESTY. He speaks his mind without a filter. Some of the people we find difficult have no filters. They say things the rest of us think in the privacy of our own minds. They offend us. They shock us. They scare us with their jaded perspective on life, even though we know they have a half truth. They are honest, and honesty is one of THE most virtuous qualities.

Maybe it’s his DETERMINATION. He has values and won’t back down. Some of the people we find difficult frustrate us with what we see as stubbornness. And yet we could learn a thing or two from their determination.

Maybe it’s his CREATIVITY. Cranky people amaze me with their creative wit. The repartee between Eastwood and his Italian barber is priceless. They verbally spar without missing a beat. We don’t have to abuse each other. But we can learn from the creativity of cranks.

Maybe it’s his RESILIENCE. He’s a hard man for a reason. He’s seen a few things and learnt how to protect himself. That shows incredible resilience. We don’t have to harden ourselves or close the world out, but we can learn from the resilience of the battle weary.

Without too much thought, I’ve come up with four qualities that we might admire in a difficult person. There are so many more. And this is just the beginning point. Find something, anything, redeeming in the difficult person, and you will be on the path to respecting them, or at least tolerating them.

As I grow older, I find that raw honesty inspires me more than anything; people who have been touched by the harshest parts of life and its left them real, worldly wise, even a little hard headed, brave, worn out but still trying, shaken but not stirred. Unpretentious, battle scarred, prone to shock you by saying the things you’re thinking, willing to see things most people turn away from, cranky honesty is disarming but beautiful in its own way. Now switch gears. So far, it’s all been about the other person. Let me let you in on a little secret. I could populate a small city with people who find me difficult. The lesson here is really for me, and what I can learn about myself. 

Life is a school and difficult people are the faculty. Difficult interactions are the class. So don’t avoid them or you will never graduate into the fullest version of who you can  be.

Difficult is SO subjective. We find people difficult because they hold up a mirror and we don’t like everything we see. Learn to love your own cranky qualities, and you will have less resistance and conflict with cranks and monsters around you.

And maybe the most important lesson of all from Gran Torino is that people are complex, they have all sorts of conflicting motives and experiences. And they change! Eastwood is protecting his worldview, his community, at least what he thinks is best for his neighborhood. He thinks his Asian neighbors are the problem, only to later find that he needs to protect them to safeguard a culture he values. He changed. People change. We ALL change. Be slow to judge.

Oscar Wilde said it well,

Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.