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My wife recently told me about an exchange she had with her sister. The story goes that once when my mother-in-law visited my family, I greeted her with the unpleasant rejoinder to not “crap up my fridge”. Now, there’s some missing background. I like a fridge to be arranged pretty openly, so it’s easy to get access to what I need quickly. My in-laws like to make efficient use of the fridge, and they’ll fill it up. When they visit, they like to buy groceries to help out with meals, basically trying to be good guests. But that means a fridge collision! My fridge sometimes becomes more crowded than I like when company visits.

Now, in honor of that moment, my wife’s sister ensures that there’s a space ready in their fridge to “crap up” if needed. It’s a bit of a jab at me, and a bit of a way to make my mother-in-law feel more welcome there.

But I don’t remember that original exchange. I’m not saying it didn’t happen; when I’m feeling stressed and cranky, I might say something unkind. I think I have a reputation as an ogre among my wife’s family, and it’s not for no reason. But I was hurt to hear that this had become something of a legend and a tradition to members of my wife’s family. I don’t remember the original remark, if I meant it as a joke, or if I didn’t mean for my mother-in-law to hear, or even if I said it at all. I don’t remember my mood or what my work day had been like or if the children were acting up. And it was all these self-justifications that got me thinking about how we love our neighbors.

First, I thought that I’d better be more careful about what I say. I think that a lot, unfortunately. Then I thought about what it means to love someone the way you love yourself. C.S. Lewis had this to say:

When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself.

So all the justification and irritation I felt on my own behalf, that I’d been misunderstood, or taken out of context, or that my mother-in-law had misremembered, ought to be applied to others when I feel they’ve offended me or hurt me somehow.

Lewis also said:

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life–namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

So I can draw several lessons from this. First, don’t be a jerk. Be thoughtful of others. Second, when someone offends you, give them the benefit the same excuses you’d give to yourself. Third, I think we’ll take on the same tradition here. Why not facilitate guests’ good intentions, and why not do it with good humor?