Years ago, I lived in a building in a large city. The building next door was only a few feet away from mine. There was a woman who lived there, whom I had never met, yet I could see her seated by her window each afternoon, sewing or reading. After several months had gone by, I began to notice that her window was dirty. Everything was unclear through the dirty window. I would say to myself, "I wonder why that woman doesn't wash her window. It really looks terrible." One bright morning I decided to clean my flat, including washing the window on the inside. Late in the afternoon when I finished the cleaning. I sat down by the window with a cup of coffee for a rest.What a surprise! Across the way, the woman sitting by her window was clearly visible. Her window was clean! Then it drawed on me. I had been criticizing (批评) her dirty window,but all the time I was watching hers through my own dirty window. That was quite an important lesson for me. How often had I looked at and criticized others through the dirty window of my heart, through my own shortcoming (缺点). Since then, whenever I wanted to judge (评判) someone, I asked myself first, "Am I looking at him through my own dirty window?" Then I try to clean the window of my own world so that I may see the world about me more clearly. |