Every
soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in
the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and
everything of the kind.
It
is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus you will be more gentle
towards all.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7 (tr
Long)
I would hardly want to be ignorant,
knowing that what I think is in error, just as I would hardly want what is bad
for me, knowing that what I desire is harmful. As foolish as I may be, I am
treating a falsehood as if it were a truth, and what is wrong as if it were
right.
Do I deceive myself? Do I hurt
myself? Yes, of course, but the tragedy is that I do so only from my own
confusion. I have never found myself thinking, “I’m going to go out and do some
evil today,” but even if I did use such terms, I would be assuming that
whatever I’m calling evil is actually a good. I remember how in the 1980’s we
liked throwing around trendy terms like “bad,” “wicked,” “ugly,” or “brutal,”
but we always used them to describe desirable and admirable things.
It will at first seem odd to
recognize this, but the tyrants would be just if they could, the gluttons would
be temperate if they could, the haters would embrace love if they could. For
whatever particular reason, wherever the responsibility lies, they don’t know
any better. They pursue misery under the appearance of happiness, “they make a
desert and call it peace.”
Once I grasp that vice grows out of
misunderstanding, I can find it so much easier to be understanding of others.
If I simply paint a man as a nasty villain, I will fill myself with contempt
for him, but if I see him as a fellow suffering from a deficiency, he will more
easily receive my sympathy.
After all, do I not ask for
compassion whenever I have stumbled and fallen from blindly groping around in
the dark? When I have made mistakes, do I not hope that others will help me to
correct those mistakes, instead of casting me out?
Why should I turn another into a
faceless force of evil? Why do I insist on making him my enemy? If he blunders
about without a clue, much as I often do, should I not rather recognize myself
in him, and call him a friend?
If I blame him for responding with
hatred to the pain he feels, why do I think I am somehow justified in responding with
hatred to the pain I feel? If I refuse to forgive him for his error, why do I
think I should be forgiven for my errors?
I am best served by offering an
embrace before I raise my fists.
Written in 1/2008
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