Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.22

It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to you that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die.

And above all, that the wrongdoer has done you no harm, for he has not made your ruling faculty worse than it was before.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7 (tr Long)

It is a beautiful thing when I can manage to love someone who has hurt me.

I had all sorts of grand plans for my life, but I am actually left with only one task still in progress, that will perhaps make my life worthy.

I married a fine woman, and I gave her all that I could. I tried to raise two children, and I gave them all that I could. Both the wife and the kids will tell you how I sometimes botched it, but I still did my best.

No, the last remaining thing I sense I need to do is this, and only this: I will not allow my resentment for another person to destroy me. I will not try to hurt another person. I will not seek vengeance on another person. I will not pursue any grudge against another person. If I can pass away, and I have somehow managed to live up to that promise, I will die a halfway decent man. I will be happy.

Love is easy when all of the circumstances fall into place. Love is hard when things don’t go our way. We learn the hard way that it isn’t love, after all, if we disappear once the situation changes.

I can love someone else, even when he has hurt me. I can understand that he meant no harm in itself, and whatever he did came from his own misunderstanding. He thought, in his own way, however ignorant or foolish, that he was doing something good. I can still love him.

And the biggest part of it all, as difficult as it may be to accept, is that any wrong done to me, however severe, has never actually harmed me at all. It may have hurt my feelings. It may have taken away my paltry possessions. It may have made me look the fool in the eyes of others. It may threaten my survival itself. Still, it never did me any harm, because it never touched the one thing, and the only thing, that is exclusively mine.

It never took my own judgment, or my own choice.

It seems so hard to love when I am filled with anger. Once I remove the anger, because I understand that there is nothing to be angry about, I am suddenly free to love without any condition. The problem was never within another person. The problem was always within me.

Written in 2/2015