Treat Everyone as a Treasure

Treat everyone as a treasure. Every person is in fact a unique work of art, with more in them than they imagine, let alone us. Sometimes our task is to help them discover and embrace what is already within them. As a part of that task, we may have to help them believe enough in themselves to first find, then confirm and affirm what is there.
I was raised to believe that in everyone there was at least one great truth. Our job was to listen for and help others discover what their truth was. Perhaps it was something that they had learned through their unique life experience. However, if we refused to listen to them, whether through disinterest or disdain, we would not discover their singular take on what they had endured to the point of insight. This would be true whether they already had the insight, but had nobody with whom to share it, or whether they were in need of a sensitive, accepting listener to assist them in finding words to attain insight into their life experience.
What would your life be like if you adopted the simple principle that everyone is a treasure? There would be much more appreciation of family members, friends, strangers – even of enemies. Even your enemies are treasures; and if you could grant them that status, it would be much easier to wish them well, perhaps even to pray for them.
If you granted the status of being treasures to all others, you would likely have fewer enemies. You might turn some who oppose you into persons who in their appreciation of your positive attitude toward them, decide to become your supporters, or at least to become less liable to be your detractors. Perhaps this one reason the Apostle Paul says to do good to those who appear to be against us, because it “heaps burning coals on their heads.” It can turn their animosity into guilt; and hopefully, into quiet reprieve. Never underestimate the power of “compassionate listening.” When doctors do that, for example, they are never sued!
Treasuring and being a treasure as a habitual approach to life, must begin with you. Do you see yourself as a treasure, are you able to treasure who you are? If not, you are sadly neither seeing nor affirming the good which lives in you.
The thing about treasuring and being a treasure, is that you must first risk belief that treasure is there to be discovered. Or why go after it? Back during the California and Alaskan gold rushes of the nineteenth century, thousands of willing, courageous participants believed enough that treasure was there to risk seek it.
This is somehow akin to the self-fulfilling prophesy, which states that people become more or less what they expect to become. Expect little of yourself, and that is likely what you will discover, little. Expect that you can indeed accomplish or succeed at such and such a venture, and that is likely what you will do.
During my senior year of college, I had to take a required course on statistics. First I dreaded than decided I that since others had aced the course, so could I. I did indeed ace the class, because I believed I could – and worked hard. Interestingly, the professor would later be my best man. We came to treasure each other and the rest is history.
It takes treasuring and believing to bring into actual being your farthest hopes.