Yesterday, waiting for a coffee, I glanced up to see an old man who had once done me great harm making his way across a busy intersection. His gait was uncertain, his eyesight perhaps not the best anymore. Hunched over and handling a cane, he watched the cars uneasily.
I felt pity for him. Not the self-aggrandizing pity we might feel when our dislike is still burning fiercely. This was more like the Greek version, eleos, a kind of mourning for the suffering of others, maybe especially for one who, like me, has grown old. I do not hate him. Perhaps I once did, but the long years and the long trail of my own misdeeds against others have chastened me.
Today, there are some figures in public life, awful human beings guilty of crimes against humanity, who I do despise down to the final atom of this 73-year-old frame. Figuratively, I’d like to see their heads on spikes, but if pressed to move against them in such a way, I could not do so. Justice, yes, vengeance, no.
Growing old has given me less tolerance for my own bullshit and more insight into the tattered lives and hearts we all carry about and for the universal inheritance of suffering we all face. There is no pretense of saintliness in this. I know how dark my own heart can be, and I lay awake some nights awash in regret for the wrongs I have done others. For those reasons I wish that old man no harm and hope others might extend that sentiment to me.
