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There was this guy I didn't like in high school, for reasons about which I am able to be extremely specific. It occurred to me the other day that he'd gone to the same grad school as a guy I know through work, so I asked this guy if he knew him. He thought about it, said that the name sounded familiar, and asked me to describe him. Because I'd been in a bad mood all day, I did so. He laughed and said he'd look him up on Facebook and see if he remembered him.
Today he turned to me with a gleam in his eye and said, "Oh, god! That guy you mentioned! I know him!" And he proceeded, gleefully, to describe a number of behaviors that - if not precisely what I would have predicted of this guy, had I thought to make predictions - meshed exactly with my high-school era assessments of him. Were character a quality measurable in units of length, my assumptions about his would have fit the reality to within a few millimeters. The crowning glory was his new job, which had such a beautiful symmetry to it that, after my co-worker conveyed it to me, we both sat there and admired it for a while. Some giggling was involved.
The thing is, this is what makes me such a fucking jerk. I don't think it's appropriate to judge people by the crap they did in high school. Yet, knowing absolutely nothing about his current circumstances, I've been doing it to this guy for years. When I've thought of him, I've thought of That Creep. Were I a better person, I would be disappointed to find that my assessment of him was so accurate. After all, this is, really, a story of the failure of a man to triumph over his own baser instincts.
Instead I just feel kind of smug. If he continues behaving in this way, I think that the object of our derision is unlikely to lead a particularly happy life. Irritating me is naturally a terrible crime, but it is not one for which a person deserves to live decades of misery. My preference for being right has in this case overmatched my ability to empathize with another human being.
I read this phrase someplace: "children love justice and adults love mercy." My definition of justice includes a certain amount of mercy; I think that what children love is revenge. But it's a useful sentiment. I'm still a kid; believing revenge to be something that is always either useless or detrimental to both the person getting and the person receiving, I still want it. And that's a mental habit that I think I need to get out of, before I'm ready to call myself an adult. On a simple physical level, I have always found that there is something pleasant in the exercise of spite. It's the sort of thing that becomes addictive, and cognitive addictions are a kind of death. I view people who are unable to think clearly about certain things with horror, because they make decisions that are destructive. I don't want to be one myself.
Hence my concern about my reaction to this news. It's not such a bad thing. I'm not hurting anyone by talking trash about him behind his back with somebody who'd already formed exactly the same opinions I had. And, you know, he is a creep. The sin is a venial one. But it's a bad habit to have.
Today he turned to me with a gleam in his eye and said, "Oh, god! That guy you mentioned! I know him!" And he proceeded, gleefully, to describe a number of behaviors that - if not precisely what I would have predicted of this guy, had I thought to make predictions - meshed exactly with my high-school era assessments of him. Were character a quality measurable in units of length, my assumptions about his would have fit the reality to within a few millimeters. The crowning glory was his new job, which had such a beautiful symmetry to it that, after my co-worker conveyed it to me, we both sat there and admired it for a while. Some giggling was involved.
The thing is, this is what makes me such a fucking jerk. I don't think it's appropriate to judge people by the crap they did in high school. Yet, knowing absolutely nothing about his current circumstances, I've been doing it to this guy for years. When I've thought of him, I've thought of That Creep. Were I a better person, I would be disappointed to find that my assessment of him was so accurate. After all, this is, really, a story of the failure of a man to triumph over his own baser instincts.
Instead I just feel kind of smug. If he continues behaving in this way, I think that the object of our derision is unlikely to lead a particularly happy life. Irritating me is naturally a terrible crime, but it is not one for which a person deserves to live decades of misery. My preference for being right has in this case overmatched my ability to empathize with another human being.
I read this phrase someplace: "children love justice and adults love mercy." My definition of justice includes a certain amount of mercy; I think that what children love is revenge. But it's a useful sentiment. I'm still a kid; believing revenge to be something that is always either useless or detrimental to both the person getting and the person receiving, I still want it. And that's a mental habit that I think I need to get out of, before I'm ready to call myself an adult. On a simple physical level, I have always found that there is something pleasant in the exercise of spite. It's the sort of thing that becomes addictive, and cognitive addictions are a kind of death. I view people who are unable to think clearly about certain things with horror, because they make decisions that are destructive. I don't want to be one myself.
Hence my concern about my reaction to this news. It's not such a bad thing. I'm not hurting anyone by talking trash about him behind his back with somebody who'd already formed exactly the same opinions I had. And, you know, he is a creep. The sin is a venial one. But it's a bad habit to have.
