. . .You argue about the life and death
of another, and yelp at the name of men whom some peculiarly noble quality has
rendered great, just as tiny curs do at the approach of strangers.
For it is to your interest that no one
should appear to be good, as if virtue in another were a reproach to all your
crimes. You enviously compare the glories of others with your own dirty
actions, and do not understand how greatly to your disadvantage it is to
venture to do so. For if they who follow after virtue are greedy, lustful, and
fond of power, what must you be, who hate the very name of virtue?
You say that no one acts up to his
professions, or lives according to the standard that he sets up in his
discourses. What wonder, seeing that the words they speak are brave, gigantic,
and able to weather all the storms that wreck mankind, whereas they themselves
are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses into which each one of you
is driving his own nail.
Yet men who are crucified hang from one
single pole, but these who punish themselves are divided between as many
crosses as they have lusts, but yet are given to evil speaking, and are so
magnificent in their contempt of the vices of others that I should suppose that
they had none of their own, were it not that some criminals when on the gibbet
spit upon the spectators.
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 19 (tr Stewart)
There
was a time when I would hardly think about the relationship between what was
done to me and what I did. I would always complain bitterly, of course, when I
felt that others were hurting me, but I would still seek satisfaction when I
was hurting them. My selfishness and ignorance went hand in hand, because I
refused to see that I was demanding I be exempt from the very same expectations
I had for others, and I resented it deeply if someone else was actually better
than me.
It took
hitting bottom, something I complained about then but consider a blessing now,
to even begin to change my ways. It is still very much a work in progress, but
it begins with the connected insights that I do not become better when I think
worse of others, but actually only make myself worse when I wish to drag them
down. I have always been my own worst enemy.
I do
indeed make it harder for others when I put obstacles in their way to a good
life, and I would have seen that fairly easily if I had just switched places
with them from my own perspective. Yet while they can still choose to struggle,
to improve, to make themselves better in the face of my pettiness, I have
already defeated myself. I have disparaged their virtue, but I have abandoned
my own virtue by being exactly what I claim to hate.
The Roman
practice of crucifixion was truly barbaric, because it was not just a
punishment, or a means of execution, but a way of deliberately inflicting
horrible suffering and humiliation on the victims. I am hardly any different
when I inflict pain on others for my own satisfaction. Though I may string another
man up, or nail him to a post, I bind myself to a new cross of self-torture over
and over, every time I choose to act with malice and vice.
Written in 10/2016
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