Saturday 27 November 2021

Not acting on what is remembered of them

We see only the good

Through affinity and familiarity, we acquire the kind of subjectivity that blinds us to certain characteristics of personality and integrity. The people we seem to know by whom we have determined they can do no wrong, we hoist them on plinths of adoration, unimpeachable and perfect despite their flaws being evident to others.

The searing truth of the character of our somewhat familiars escapes scrutiny and challenge, we are left totally unpersuaded of the truth and maybe that is necessary for the kind of relationships we need to maintain for the respect or the mystique the person presents to our opinions and adulation of them.

Speak the truth always

Yet, I am of the rare disposition of not speaking ill of the dead whilst not supporting false encomiums and epitaphs that suggest a life lived differently from the knowledge we have of such persons. The needful must be done, to bury the dead. However, to praise them beyond their lived human expression is to at once attend to falsehood and do them an injustice.

The evil men do remains the evil they have done, just as the good they have done is the good for which they should be lauded and appreciated.

Do well with all

In the many stories I have heard of people who have heretofore seemed worthy of praise because their deeds are concealed in the secrecy of acts that others remember them for, I have been astounded.

All I can say is that for all that they might have done wrong, we should find it in our better selves not to act as they have done to us and so become like them, but to rise to a standard for which we might be found good, faultless, and exemplary.

The sands of time will always archive the record and in the way we have been made to feel, by those who have contemned us, if we cannot forget, we can attempt to forgive.

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