Non me deridet qui sua facta videt.
(Anonymous)

No one who sees his/her own deeds laughs at me.

(pron = nohn may day-REE-det kwee SOO-ah FAHK-tah WIH-deht)

Comment: As with other proverbs, this one yields more if we turn it inside out
and upside down a bit.

I don’t laugh at others because I see myself. I only laugh at others because,
otherwise, I would have to look at myself. I have seen myself. And when I see
what is really here, and accept it (big condition), the compassion that I learn
for myself transfers to others. Having accepted myself with all that I am, I
can only accept others.

Likewise, if I am making fun of others, it is only a public display of the
contempt I hold for myself.

I like to think that I have had good opportunity, as a parent and as a teacher,
to observe young people as they come into the world and grow up in front of me.
Even as I write this morning, I have received a phone call from a young man
(now in his mid to late 20’s) who first entered my life as a student when he
was 14. Though I can offer no concrete “proof” (and won’t argue with those who
think otherwise) I am convinced that children do not enter this life with
self-loathing and self-contempt as features of the essence of who they are.
No. That part of the package is something they “learn” to do from those around
them. The young people and later adults who are the quickest to deride others
are those who have drunk the deepest at that ancestral pool.

The only “cure” that I have learned is a daily appointment with the mirror. Can
I look, and accept myself? Whatever I do standing in that mirror is exactly
what I am going to do to others for the rest of the day.