I was on my way home on a work trip from the US. I had just cleared customs and I could see an airport porter attending to a paraplegic lady. I could see it was his job to get her from one end of the airport to the other and.

They were having a sweet exchange together, and as I saw this man stand, I realized that he himself had what people would think of as a physical disability - he seemed to be limping. I approached him and asked him how his day was going because he was just such a glowing presence and such a kind affection for this lady. He struggled to speak a little bit, and I realized that he had cerebral palsy.

He had difficulty standing, but he had so much to tell me about the gratitude that he felt in his work and how much he was enjoying this woman that he was tasked with caring for. I got to follow him and meet him a little bit more deeply. His name was Chad. 

He told me it was a great day and that he enjoyed the sunshine. I asked him if he enjoyed his work and he said he loved it so much because he got to help people.

Chad knew how to be present and he lived in that space of being present. That was the space that he occupies all his days, and you could just tell in his manner of being. He invited me to slow down and take in life with him at the pace that he lived. He was such a beautiful soul, just blessing everybody in his path. Chad knew how to be still inside and how to be present. That’s the kind of guy that is a sage in our midst. 

Culture has largely lost this. We don't know how to be present. When we think about the absence of stillness and presence, and the cost of all of that, the fruit of life is violence. It's a violent pace. It's a violent encounter with people who are in a hurry. It's a violent assault of too many thoughts to be able to digest at any given time. 

Aspiring to a pace of life, a living pace that allows for us to be present, is one of the antidotes that we need in an ailing culture. 

If you find yourself in such a hurry, which is common these days, one of the invitations is to focus on your relational self, the self that you bring to your neighbor, coworkers, family, etc. And ask: am I an agent of violence here or am I an agent of depth and presence and care and kindness? 

Here’s another example. 

 I work with mentoring and guiding a group of executive leaders and business owners. One of the themes that we're driving toward is trying to invite these men into forms of self examination that can help and bless the many people around them that they are influencing.

It's very common in our culture to look away from the self and out into the ether and find something to be frustrated with–to see all of the problems. It’s easy to look at as if it were out there in the world instead of here in us. 

One of the men in our group, after giving some serious thought to this, realized that there wasn't a single issue in his life that wasn't connected to frustrated anger in judgment of somebody else's behavior.

He came to the awareness of how little of this he had any viable means of changing. So he was encouraged into forms of self-examination. Every time he felt the impulse to cast judgment or insight blame in somebody else's world, he was encouraged to ask, is there anything in my manner or my host of habits or my day-to-day that I could have done better for somebody else? Did I treat everybody in the way that I want to be treated myself?

This is the question that has stood the test of time: am I doing unto others as I would have them do unto me? The humbling answer he found in that examination was, no, I've just been judging other people.

What did that exercise bring him? The knowledge was that he was unwell. He was angry the bulk of the time. He was unsatisfied. He was despondent about what he was going to face in the day, and his family also felt that he was a miserable person to be around. 

So he tried. The mere elimination of the impulse to judge in his life began to bear immediate fruit for his family. They reported that he was more often at ease, that they felt safer in his presence, that they didn't feel like they were under constant surveillance with him. 

It's a beautiful question to ask: what effect am I having on the people around me and do they feel safe and welcome in my presence? If the answer is no, the antidote to that might be to engage in some self-examination.

It ties again to pacing and presence. Taking a moment to slow long enough to reason your way through what the moments in your day were and how you showed up there. Were you an agent of kindness and compassion or were you an agent of violence and judgment? Which of those two do you want to be? Who do you want to be?