Spotted

The healthier I become, the more I'm beginning to take notice of the mean people around me. Mean, angry people in the grocery store, angry and sullen worshipers at church, rude and nasty drivers on the road. I am also noticing that my sister just so happens to be one of those mean people. She has become very angry and snippy about certain members of our immediate family and is vocally outspoken about her dislike of them.  She spends a lot of time judging these people. What they say or do, how they act, who they date has all of a sudden become her business. I take that back. It isn't all of a sudden. She has always been like that. She has always judged people and found most of them to be beneath her standards. I saw a look of pride wash across her face the other day and it was sooo haughty....Wow! It really caught me off guard. You could (I could) actually see on her face the fact that she thought that she was better than the person that she was complaining about. I know that she is not aware that her face reflects this, and she would be mortified if she knew. She likes to think of herself as a humanitarian, you know the type....They always help out others with donations of money, food and they donate their time to worthy causes and such. She IS one of those people who give freely from what God has blessed them with. But she also judges people relentlessly and sometimes she forgets what it is like to be down and out or down trodden or down on your luck or just plain down. The things that I hear her say she dislikes about someone else usually can be traced back to the very things that I can see are her own character flaws. Like the Alanon slogan says- "If you spot it, You got it".  So, if I "spot it" in her, then do I also have the same inclinations?? Am I mean and angry, snippy and haughty?? Good Lord, I certainly hope not! But it is a good lesson for me to learn. To remember to watch what I think about other people and especially to try to watch so my thoughts don't translate onto my own facial expressions. Or maybe the lesson here is to not have those kinds of thoughts anymore about other people. No judging them or complaining about them. More of a live and let live kinda thing.
I like this quote by Plato- "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle". I'll give that a try.