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If you have pain and tension along with the thoughts “If it weren’t for those stupid people” or “that specific idiot” it means there’s an entire class of mental models you don’t have access to.

This is arrogance. It’s drawing a line in your faith journey. “There are no more mental models, I have them all, in none of them is it ok to be stupid thus stupid people are bad”

Having a child who is mentally disabled can suddenly someone because suddenly a gateway is opened up. There’s now a path to understanding the black forest in your map.

Once that black forest of mental models is revealed it is seen to be just like your forest. It has it’s good and bad. Just organized differently.

Faith in God is a primal innocent optimism. It is easiest to preserve in smaller units. Idyllic peaceful pools. As the unit grows, the terribleness of the world is let in. It sharpens the senses. It creates pessimism.

Think the overprotective father wanting to shield his little girl from the world.

Your knowledge rises in proportion to how much optimism you sacrifice. The best people in the world are knowledgeable yet optimistic only via the infinite optimism of “perfect” faith.

They often are the best teachers As they alone can light other candles without dimming themselves. They are plastic led lights. They are fires.

See this fiery soul? You know that it is you yourself. See the workd as having the same soul, your soul. And if you can’t, well it means you still have more to go. Don’t turn your back.

You need to see how everyone sees themselves as the ‘chosen one’ (in an indra’s net way). Treating everyone, including yourself, like a chosen hero, is the deadlift for building your empathy muscle.

If you can’t emphathize with whatever group or individual hate, it means your empathy muscle is weak Like a wimpy skinny man.

High empathy people have the most difficult time emphathizing with low empathy people strangely enough.

Until even low empathy people can be loved they will not reach that final gate. Most of us cannot embrace these asymmetrical relationships. They feel toxic. One side only takes.

Having a child bridges this a bit. To have something that only takes yet still lovable.

If you see that child as a soldier. Someone to continue your fight for glory. Then you never learn what unconsitional love is.

God is unconditional love. Traditional families were a great source of this path because of the experiences of relationships with wife, husband, children is a great university to learn the Theory of Unconditional Love.

If understanding quantum mechanics were the pinnacle of intellectual strength. Understanding unconditional love is the pinnacle of empathic strength.

Chinese families are often bad at this. Every emotion feels conditional. In such families, there’s no sense of God. “Be an A student or i’ll withhold my love” teaches you that love is finite.

This is true, but that you miss the point. To understand that love being finite yet love being unconditional are both true is to understand the willingness to die for love.