June 29
When someone wrongs you, ask yourself at once: what notion of good and evil led him to it? Once you have seen that, you will feel pity, not astonishment and not anger — for you too once held similar notions.
Meditations VII,26
Listening mode
When someone wrongs you, ask yourself at once: what notion of good and evil led him to it? Once you have seen that, you will feel pity, not astonishment and not anger — for you too once held similar notions.
When someone has hurt you, an explanation that spares you is usually close at hand: he was inconsiderate, couldn't be bothered, didn't think. It gets harder when you ask what he actually did it for. Sometimes you then come upon a reason that isn't shabby at all. He wanted to be honest when he told you that. Or he wanted to protect someone else when he passed you over.
Reasons like these are not so easy to look down on. With a mistake you have long since left behind, you can be lenient. You recognise in it an earlier version of yourself. Here, though, the other person may simply have weighed differently something that matters to you too. In his place, would you have put candour before tact? Possibly yes, on another day.
This does not make the hurt any smaller. It just no longer has a clear culprit. You can still tell him that it hurt you, and perhaps you should. Only you no longer say it as someone who knows better.
