The words continually echoed to me are "We are all the hero's of our own story". I keep trying to look at every person in my life, good or bad, from their point of view. Therefore, removing my emotions or perspective from it. Going from their "hero" esc point and trying to keep my own thoughts to grace and compassion through that lens.
I read the "Bait of Satan" many years ago and still find it very relevant to my life now. It's all about how we deal with things that hurt us and do so with grace. It's an incredibly challenging work. I'm sure in years passed I've discussed it. It and a few other works pop up into my head, always cyclically during certain periods.
It's about dealing with your inner self not to get a bitter root in your heart. Easily, we as people can become bitter and terse and wounded. The lines of right and wrong- clear marks of war in the sand. Rarely though, are human relationships that simple. I have tried exploring that a lot in my writing. That good and evil are rarely the simple thing. We cannot make villains of humans, they are humans.
There was a post I saw about Hitler and how people couldn't grasp that he could be tender to a child. We demonized him because he *was* a vile creature, but he was also a person. The same way we do this in our heads. I remember my elementary school bully- she was a vindictive, mean, manipulative person. I also sat in a room with her once while she cried that no one liked her and she had no friends. We are rarely so simple. Truly, we are all capable of great good, great wrong, and the little instances in between.
I just find often in life we set lines and expect people to be simply all evil, all good, and we all fail each other's expectations. Yet, we all set them and we all make them but we all live in the in between for the most part. Historically, we find people who commit acts in relation to their power.
So you get Hitler and his great evil- in relation to his power. You may find an angry mob- hurting innocents but only what they can grasp- not millions. Evils are all justifiable when we find the place and power. For example- an angry facebook mob devoted to hurting someone's feelings. I've literally watched that happen. Yet, those people aren't inherently evil or vile. We find groups of people who will do things based on the power afforded to them. I have gotten in a facebook argument with someone and with my words- shorn them. While they likely do not remember me or my comments- I should not have used the anonymous nature of the internet to make my point with rudeness.
We find these- big and small- we had KKK groups rallying and a woman died. I've seen people be cast out of a church in a painful way and their hearts were so wounded. I've seen it more than once. Power and pain.
We measure clearly the killing of bodies- what about the killing of souls? We measure all these evils and yet inflict little unkindness's upon our circles. It's as though human nature does not lend itself well to choosing goodness often.
Which is a rather sobering thought- at least to me. So then I think about myself, my life, my sphere of influence, where I am hurt and where I have hurt and what power I possess. How have I used it?
So, whenever I sit in hurt I do a self-examination of where I can put more kindness into the world. In those relationships where have I failed? Where can I do better? Where have I failed to do good? Who do I want to be? I wonder if sometimes things fall a part so God can give me a humility lesson and bring me back to looking at who I am. Oh I hope not, let's just hope he's a God of opportunity.
I find that I cope better in self examination. I find I live better when I reach for compassion when I'm angry. That is not to say I am perfect at this. That is not to say that is my first inclination. However, we are not all made by our first inclination.
I was just reminding someone yesterday, "We all fall in various ways, it what we do to get back up. Find the people who will give you a hand and love you when you fall. "
Part of that is loving yourself. I am by far my hardest critic. Yet, I am still struck by "the beauty of things gone wrong", a friend of mine said that once when he was interviewed by NPR (sorry to name drop that but it was super cool to me). I try to live that. Everything in life is going to go wrong at some point or another, likely more than one thing at a time. I just keep trying to find the beauty in it.