Do You Get Annoyed a Lot?

There is a penetrating teaching by the master of souls, the Baal Shem Tov. He says that when you look at another person, you are really looking in the mirror. The things that annoy you most in others are the things that annoy you most about yourself. The reason you notice them in your fellow is because they are inside you, they are familiar, and they bother you, because they are yours. 
If you didn't suffer from the same issue you simply wouldn't be able to recognize it in another person. You have to identify with something to be effected by it. If it pushes your buttons, it's because they are your buttons.
So if you think everyone around you is so self-absorbed, if all you can see in others is selfishness...
You can change what you see around yourself. But you have to change yourself.
By Rabbi Mendel (Menachem) Bluming of Chabad Potomac, Maryland since 2000 and Rabbi Moss

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