“If you are penient, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you, Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.” —Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. You may remember this beautiful words from a previous letter of mine called “on Love”. I know straight off the bat this quote hit you in the face and hit home but I started it off like that to set a foundation of this letter - ‘don’t be angry with wrongdoers.’ I will be transparent with you my lovely readers, I copied the title of this letter from a chapter of a book that I will most likely be quoting from. How this idea of this letter came about was quite interesting, I was having a conversation, argument, dialogue with my brother in Christ 4(Four) this is how our friendship is by the way, we are always arguing about different ideas. Cute right? Anyways we was having a conversation about love, sin, hate, religion while I was reading a the chapter that inspired this letter - ‘Don't be angry with wrongdoers.’ by Epictetus and the points we were giving was alining with what I was reading as well and then it hit me - we human are very judgemental, especially when a wrong has been done to us and we react and come to a decision about the wrongdoer in a wrong way. Once a wrong or sin has been done towards you, one has to be penitent or feel sorry for that wrong doer.
Okay, First “what grounds do you have for being angry with anyone?” I’ll wait… let’s be real and blunt here guys, we don’t have a ground to stand on at all because we have all annoyed and done wrong to someone before, we are just as bad as the person who done a wrong to us. If someone lied to you do not be angry and react in a negative way because you have lied to someone before; we are all sinners anyways what is the point of being angry with someone who has the very nature like you. Now I am not saying do not punish the wrongdoer or you should be okay with the wrong that has happened to you, I am saying do not be angry, you are merely just being angry with yourself. Look at it this way, there is a very high chance of you committing the same wrong in the future or have already committed that same wrong in the past. It is easier said than done but again “man is a bridge not a goal.”
Another way to deal with wrongdoers is by sort of pitying them - Epictetus quotes; “we use labels thief and robber in connection with them, but what do these words mean? They merely signify that people are confused about what is good and bad. So should we be angry with them, or should we pity them instead.” If we see wrongdoers as people we pity, we will be more patient with them and will rather show them the right way. This then calms you down, helps you become less angry and you will react in a better way. Instead of saying “we should do away with this person that has wronged me or punish them.” we should say instead “shouldn’t we rid ourselves of people deceived about what’s most important, people who are blind - not in their faculty of vision, their ability to distinguish white from black - but in the moral capaciyy to distinghush good from bad?” If you put it that way instead, you will see how inhumane your position is. It is like saying like Epictetus said in his book - “shouldn’t this blind man, and this deaf man, be executed? because if loss of the greatest assets involves the greatest hamd, and someone deprived of their moral bearings, which is the most important capacity they have - well, why add anger to their loss?” What he is doing here is linking inability to have morals on the same level as inability to see or hear because although both have different reasons in humanity, they both still huge assets in humanity but we pity the blind and deaf but not the humans with inability to distinguish between right and wrong. Again this is easier said than done trust me because there are people who are far gone, people beyond helping, people who we can not pity on, people are just wicked and evil. How we deal with them, honesty I don’t know unless I bring a religious view but maybe that will be for another day, in this letter I am talking about everyday wrongdoers not the extreme ones.
This might be a bit off topic but to be very transparent and honest with you my dear readers, sometimes I think to myself what rights do I have to be writing letters like this because I am not perfect at all, by any stretch of the imagination far from it. So writing letters like this takes a toil on me a lot and I think deep into what I am saying. Take this part this letter as me opening up to you guys, for what kind of writer I am if I can not build someone what of a relationship with my readers. Maybe it’s the Dostoevsky in me speaking. Damn. Anyways.
“Realise that the thief and the adulterer cannot touch what’s yours, only what is common property everywhere and not under your control. If you make light of those things and ignore them, who is left to be angry with? As long as you honor material things, direct your anger towards yourself than the thief or adulterer.” - “A man only loses what he has. I lost clothes. Yes because you had clothes, Loss and sorrow are only possible with respect to things we own.” I mean the devil is in the details here, realise that anything outside your control should not offend you because you can not control it. If a wrong is done to you, no point getting angry with the wrongdoer because you can not control the wrongdoer at all. Don’t take such value to things outside your control and you won’t be angry with anything. Now if someone has done you wrong and you get annoyed, don’t be angry with them because they have their own understanding of life, you should be angry with yourself for letting someone who has his or her own opinion about life affect your faculty of reason. Marcus Aurelius stated on his meditations - “Another does wrong. What is that to me? Let him see to it: he has his own disposition, his own action. I have now what universal nature wishes me to have now, and I do what my own nature wishes me to do now.” If you go contrary to this, it just means they have control over you. Epictetus gives a great example of this or gives a great statement - “but the tyrant will chain - what will he chain? your leg. He will chop off - what? your head. What he will never chain or chop off is your integrity.” I promise you guys, if you hold value in having a sound mind, having a good character and hold well with what is your own ‘yourself’ no wrongdoer will offend you. Hell you won’t even think a wrong is done to you at all because you value and you are focusing on something else more important to you. This is the Prime Stoic Dortince. Its sounds selfish but its not, in the chapter ‘How we should act towards the powerful’ - Epictetus stated this, its quite funny as well - “No, its me looking after myself. If you press the point, I will concede that in the process I give you the same attention I give my dishes.” Like the wrongdoers, you acknowledge they are there and need to be cleansed but it’s up to you to give them the time of day.
I think it is now time to bring this letter to a close, its 01:03 am right now and I have work so its best to end this letter with words from Marcus Aurelius’ - “Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”
Farewell.