If you are brave and read comments after articles on the internet, you see a lot of people calling each other “hypocrite.”

You yourself might have – once or twice in your lifetime – called someone a hypocrite. Or maybe you’re one to think it without saying it out loud.

And someone might have even called you a hypocrite.

In my effort to live into my word for 2017, the word transmute (you can read about that in my previous post), I’m trying to be aware when I notice a negative quality in others –  and then look at myself to see how that very quality manifests in me.

You know, shine a light on myself to see what’s there, good and bad, light and dark.

I’m always a bit stunned when the light makes something clear, and I see something dark in myself. When I see qualities like hypocrisy in myself, my thoughts are, “How did THAT slip in there? How did I miss it? And how did it feel so normal, so right?”

I think the last part hits the nail on the head for me.

When I am attached to being right, I can’t see myself very clearly. I can’t see how I’m acting, what I’m saying, what I’m doing . . . how it could actually be negative. In this case, how it just might be hypocritical.

So now when I think, “Well, that’s hypocritical!” I’m learning to take a step back and look at myself.

To shine a bright light at myself. Might I be hypocritical in some way?

You know the answer.

Yes, I can be a hypocrite. In fact, I am sometimes a hypocrite.

Yes, that’s disappointing.

When I shine that light on myself, I can see what’s there, the light and the shadow.

Does my noticing make much difference in this big world with its troubles?

Maybe not.

But it makes a difference in how I feel (a whole lot less righteous and judgmental!), and that makes a difference in how I treat others, even if only in small ways.

And you know what, that’s a difference I can make.

It’s a difference I choose to make.

Will it change the world?

No.

But it will change me.