An item of Jesus lore

Forgive those who trespass against you, it is explained, because by doing so you prove your moral superiority over your foolish enemies: you are greater than they, closer to god, more enlightened, more noble, more selfless, etc.

The truth is that the reason to forgive those who trespass against us, or, at any rate, to forget that they did, is entirely and wholly practical and selfish: this is because the feelings of anger and revenge are more damaging to us than they are to their objects.

In truth, revenge is rarely possible: most people trespass against us only when they feel they can do so with impunity; most trespasses against us are therefore unavengeable. What could possibly be the point of boiling with fury in such a situation?

A taxi driver nearly ran me -- and a lady walking alongside me -- over at a pedestrian crossing today and, into the bargain, showed us the finger. She was riled beyond all belief, boiled over with anger, yelling, and -- gasping for air (a heart condition?).

I wasn't. If I had a gun in my hand, and knew I could use it with impunity, I would have killed the unwed-mother's-son on the spot, of course, out of a sense of duty -- we all have the duty to punish the uncouth whenever we can. But I would not have done it in anger: I don't hate him. In truth, I don't have any feelings for him: he is like air to me.

You see, unlike my lady companion, I was not riled.

I suppose this means that, after all these years of working at it, I have at last reached the point of uppeka -- equanimity -- what was in the seventeenth century Europe called (after Seneca) costanza: an emotional indifference to the idiocies of the world.

Like all lessons in life, I learned this one from engagement with women.

A certain lady early in life caused me a great amount of grief. When we have parted, I was very angry at her for her irrational, cruel, inconsiderate behavior and considered ways in which I could punish her. Then, upon reflection, I realized that it was unnecessary for me to punish her at all: that, because of the way she thinks (or rather doesn't) and behaves, she is miserable herself; and that she will continue to be miserable for as long as she is alive; and that, in short, she will be her own punishment. It was her fate to be with herself, in her own company, every day of her life until the day she dies. I on the other hand was free to walk away from that disaster.

My feelings calmed, I did. I have been much happier since. Some years later, friends reported to me that some pretty awful things happened to her. By then, fully in command of my uppeka, I managed to express a few honest, if not really heartfelt, words of pity for her. I was right. I had seen it coming.

Poor thing, actually.

In a sense, I owe her a great deal, it would seem. But I think I have paid that tuition bill already with the pound of flesh she had extracted while we were together. We are therefore even.