Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.26

When a man has done you any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when you have seen this, you will pity him, and you will neither wonder nor be angry.

For either you yourself think the same thing to be good that he does, or another thing of the same kind. It is your duty then to pardon him.

But if you do not think such things to be good or evil, you will more readily be well disposed to him who is in error.

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

Oh my, what games we play! We say that we are insulted, offended, or outraged. We demand that those we perceive as having committed certain sins be considered unacceptable, inappropriate, or intolerable. We wish to do them hurt, to cast them out, or to make their lives unlivable. Pain for pain, we think, is the ideal model of fairness. There’s nothing quite like our indignation to make us feel better, even as it makes others feel worse. Cast blame, above all else.

There is another way. However wrong another person may seem, I can seek to understand him before I spit my venom. However he has acted, he somehow thought it to be a good. What was he thinking? Why was he thinking it? What did he actually intend? What was the nature of his purpose, and where was his costly mistake?

One of two things can happen when I try to think with another man, instead of against another man. I may see that we share the same values, even as he has somehow gotten confused. Then I can easily forgive him, and try to help him back onto the path.

Or I may see that we are diametrically opposed in our judgments, and that our respective opinions do not meet at all. Still, I can also forgive him then, because if I am convinced that I am right, and that he is wrong, I can grasp that my own sense of right can never allow me to do him any wrong. His ignorance never excuses my own malice.

Let me not merely look at what a man has done; let me also consider why he might have done it. Once I try to see it through his eyes, he will no longer be the other, the enemy, and the one to be blamed, discarded or destroyed. I will see him in myself, and myself in him.

The power of reason allows me to not only be myself, but also to know what is beyond myself, to contain the nature of other things within my own nature. It is through this power of mind that compassion and love are possible.

Another man rules his own estimation, but I rule mine. Let me not become what I so easily condemn.

“You are wrong!” Perhaps. Now explain to me how that is so, and help me to become better. Even if I refuse to learn, excuse me for my foolishness, because you can know what it is that has made me a fool, if you only try.

Written in 11/2007