"This is not for me."

 I wish I could remember where I came across this thought so I could accredit it, but in the last week I have listened to such a variety of people on a dedicated spiritual path that I cannot remember which of them said it. The best I can do is to acknowledge that it was not my own thought, and if I come across it again I'm come back and leave a note so you know who said it.

It cropped up in a YouTube video/podcast, in which the person was commenting on the by now highly toxic polarity that has taken hold of our society — people listening only to the voices of their own tribe, and attributing to those who they've categorised as enemies every imaginable kind of nastiness, including projecting their own nastiness onto them.

As a result, it has become almost impossible to have a calm and constructive conversation about ideological issues, battle lines being drawn in bold and underlined for good measure, as they are.

And this YouTuber suggested that we'd do well just now to drop any categorising of approaches as "right" or "wrong". They said that instead of saying "you're wrong" or "this is wrong", we might instead choose to say, "it's not for me."

I really love that. "Judgement is mine, saith the Lord," and if we simply say "it's not for me", we make our position clear without standing in judgement over someone else's choices.

As a way forward, I have the feeling it would import peace and calm into our discourse. I'm thinking that we should embed it into not only our conversation but also into our discipline of thought. So we might encounter evidence of someone's promiscuity or carelessness with money or addiction or vulgarity, and silently make the choice, "this is not for me."

My hunch is that it would help build our own resolve as well as refraining from condemning the other, because the words speak right into our own life as a warning, a helpful admonition, the setting of a boundary.

Conversely, when we encounter something that resonates for us, that stands out as desirable and good, instead of pronouncing it to be right we can simply acknowledge our accord: "This is for me", like Joshua, when instead of making pronouncements upon the lives of others, he simply said, 

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." [Joshua 24.15]

What do you think?