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Show 354 "You are not manipulative with me and I don't believe that you are mean and want to hurt people," Faith is saying and I am forcing myself to look into her eyes. I am wanting to believe her. "Do you really think you are a mean, manipulative person who wants to hurt others?" she is asking, seeing the doubt in my eyes at her confidence in me. I am closing my eyes, trying to measure the percentages of compassionate acts against my more malevolent moments. Are my good moments purely driven by uherior, manipulative, self-centered motives? It is an arithmetic that compares the incomparable - nights without sleep lovingly comforting a sick child against impatience at the check-out counter; raking the leaves from an absent neighbor's lawn against anger towards the driver who cuts in front of us; trying very hard to be a good person - and, yes, still even a good patient - against the grief of being told I have not succeeded. "Sometimes," I say. It is honest. "We all are sometimes," Faith is saying. I am not a perfect person, of course, I am realizing more deeply than before. No mortal person on this Earth is. I have mean moments and there are times when I am simply not nice. But it is not who I am at my essence. At my core. I am much more than what I do. |
