Talk to everyone as if they were a stranger, love everyone as if they were your mother. The energy you carry in this life is critically important. Your ability to speak as if you know nothing about any of the inputs is the super power.
When we speak to strangers we do not rely on logic to drive our responses. We engage in reasoning about the information presented in that space and time. It is unencumbered by the weight of the past. We as humans hope to change our habits, persona, beliefs, and any number of others. We often fall short on showing up to the gym as often as we think we should, and when you know people you have an understanding of how often they fall short relative to your accurate knowledge of how often you fail to change.
When we speak to a stranger it is often as if they have never failed before. We take the words they say for their merit, and play from that. We get to be inquisitive about the entire situation. I've found it best to have joy, and great fullness, and love akin to what you have for your mother useful when being truly inquisitive.
Reflections
What would it mean to speak to everyone as if they were a stranger? To approach each conversation unencumbered by the weight of what you know about their past failures, their patterns, their habits? When we speak to strangers, we take their words at face value. We're inquisitive. We give them the benefit of assuming they might succeed this time.
But with people we know, we carry all that history. We know how often they fall short. More dangerously, we know how often we ourselves fail to change, and we project that knowledge onto them. The gym membership that goes unused. The habits we swear we'll build. The person we promise to become.
There's something powerful in treating the familiar as strange, in loving everyone with the unconditional warmth you'd have for your mother while simultaneously approaching them with the openness you'd give a stranger. Joy, fullness, love - combined with genuine curiosity about who they are right now, in this moment, free from the story of who they've been.
What if the superpower isn't speaking as if you know nothing - it's choosing to set aside what you know in order to be present to what's actually here?