The Thanksgiving spirit has me thinking back to when I was indebted with a gratitude to a man of the cloth. This event was the most unimaginable possible occurrence to my young, foolhardy, and iconoclastic self. The chaplain at my boarding school walked into the chapel during our Sunday meeting with a chip on his shoulder. He got up to the podium, stained-glass sunbeams bouncing off his tonsured head, and he said: “I want to talk to you about tolerance”

Oh great, thought the student body, another in what seemed to be a lifelong series of coddling, patronizing, ineffecting after school special lectures. But this guy taught all of us one of the most important and resonant lessons of these trying times. Tolerance is not a virtue. It’s quite simple, tolerance informs another party that they are a burden to the tolerant. Tolerance puts one in the position of saying “I am dealing with this. Whatever or Whomever I am tolerating is a problem“ Tolerance is below the least one can do, it is in fact a negative.Tolerance only fosters hatred. Look at all the work one has to do! Who would want to toil under such conditions? Better to be rid of the tolerated for the sake of the tolerant, who are really working themselves to death over here.

What I took from what he said was that tolerance, when it came to other people in the world, was simply abhorrent.(Unless you’re dealing with sociopaths, tolerating them is probably okay) In order for this world to get any better, we must practice the much more worthwhile virtue of acceptance. Acceptance of all peoples of the Earth is what leads us to equality. It doesn’t mean one has to be in love and totally complacent with everything about a person or a people. One just has to accept them on the grounds that we bleed the same blood and breathe the same air. Debate, engage, and inspire till the cows come home, but don’t pretend as if others are anymore of a burden to interact with than ourselves. That kind of mentality begats the struggling word we have today.

Acceptance is not an easy virtue. It requires a level of compassion few are taught, but one that comes naturally if the toxicity of mankind is kept at bay for long enough. Maybe one just has to build up a tolerance for it.