Is the secret to life seeing others as their most true selves?

​Is that maybe the secret to life? To embrace those who are in need with our compassion, and see them in our mind's eye as their most true selves?

I was reading in scripture this morning. In Philippians 2:3 it says: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

I found myself wondering, is the answer to living life well, to happiness, to world peace - is it really that simple? Like, if everyone today, no matter what God they do or do not follow, if suddenly they made the choice to start counting every other human as more significant than themselves, what would the new world look like?

That's when I was drawn back to the beautiful words McConaughey wrote in his book Greenlights.

In his book, McConaughey doesn't write a lot about his spiritual journey. It's clear, though, through what he does write, prayer is important to him.

In reading his thoughts on prayer (I'll share his full piece in the comments), I couldn't help but notice how much his idea of prayer is to take the focus off himself and place it on others.

I think that's important.

Because I guess I like to give humans the benefit of the doubt. I think somewhere in all of us is a desire to see other humans as good. Some of us wear that desire on our sleeves. Some of us have it buried so far beneath our tainted view of humanity that we can barely feel it, let alone call on it.

But still - I believe that desire is there in all of us.

That desire gets easily tripped up by the reality that we see people as they present themselves to be - and not who they truly are. I guess that's an opinion built on my belief that as much as people want to see the good in others, they want to be that same kind of good themselves. But very few of us - if ANY of us - are presenting the human to the world that we truly want to be. That we truly are.

Maybe we lack the discipline to be that person.
Maybe the faith.
Maybe having someone in our lives to remind us we are that person.

But for whatever reason - very few of us see others for who they want to be, and very few of us are living the lives of the person we want to be.

That makes for a complicated world.

Which makes me wonder again, is the answer to that as simple as embracing those who are in need with our compassion, and see them in our mind's eye as their most true selves?

For me personally, I'm sitting here additionally wondering, how on earth can the simplest answer in the world be the hardest thing in the world to do?

And once again - for me personally - can I do that without the power of prayer? A prayer that points me wholly away from myself and squarely and compassionately at all others.

I don't know - but it's sure worth a try.