Each one of us has layers upon layers of experiences, built up, that shape our personalities and guide our reactions. We may have a tendency towards extroversion but unhappy experience may have taught us to be guarded about true feelings. I am quick to make decisions but if I am challenged I can fall apart and have difficulty deciding on the right course of action, why? Because as a student, certain hasty decisions resulted in stinging rebukes and harsh reprisals while in school.
Every person we meet is like the wall above, layers of their past, partially exposed, but more often hidden; hidden but not gone. I can be impatient with others, baffled as to why they keep making bad decisions or are unwilling to try something new that would open doors and ease their way. Then I remember the layers, the events and experiences that have shaped them.
Are you familiar with the phrase, "But for the grace of GOD, there go I" ? It is one of the truest statements in the English language. In other words, "If it was not for God's grace in my life, that could be me!" Let's not kid ourselves, often it is me. In fact, the patterns and behaviors that I resent and chaff against the most in other people are often the ones I battle within my self.
It takes vision and humility to recognize that our reactions to others are often grace-less, totally opposite from the patient understanding we desire for ourselves. Consider 1st Corinthians 13, often quoted but little implemented chapter that describes the powerful shape of true love.
Chapter 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I couldn't say it any better. We desire to be known, we desire kindness, as we mature let's look past the layers and love others the way we want to be loved, even on our crankiest, off-kilter-est, sleep deprived-i-est day.