Who decides the official “Worst Day Of The Year?” Hallmark. If a panel of Nobel Prize physicists decided that, I would be skeptical, and if Hallmark declared on what really happened with the Big Bang, I would guffaw. But when Hallmark declared, several years ago, that my birthday is the worst day of the year, I had to bow to them.

I have an anniversary in July of a worst day in my life, and the anniversary of my father’s shocking death suckerpunches me every year. I know it’s coming, and it happened 42 years ago, but it kicks me in the stomach every year.

So does Good Friday. A Catholic church is a morbid place during the Triduum, with Jesus on the cross and all the saints covered in red robes, as if to spare them the trauma of the events recounted during these days.

A Zen story tells of an eminent monk who was accused of fathering the child of a young girl. “Is that so?” he replied to his accusers. “So des ka” is a Japanese phrase for that, which is a favorite of mine, acquired watching Japanese TV shows. Humiliated and despised, the Zen monk’s reply was simply a bemused, “Is that so?” After the truth came out and the child was taken from him, his final response was the same: “Is that so?” Throughout the Passion narratives, I like to imagine Jesus not saying, “You say so,” or, “You have said it,” but, “So des ka.”

What really happened? I see my son and think, “This guy is capable of greatness.” God must have felt the same about Jesus, that He would accomplish great things. But when did Jesus read those Suffering Servant prophecies and realize He was destined to be crucified?

Hindsight is 20-20, and it’s easy to say that anyone could have seen where Jesus was headed, given the ruthlessness of His enemies. One of my hard lessons of Lent is to gain some insight into how much and how often I am overwhelmed and defeated by the corruption entwined with my every thought and impulse. To recount how Jesus was done in by cold blood, hard hearts, and politics, is to appreciate Jesus’ knowledge that His executioners didn’t know what they were doing. Maybe they thought they knew, but do we ever? Donald Rumsfeld could have told the Sanhedrin about “unknown unknowns,” and Pilate could have rephrased his famous rhetoric: “What is that?”

I imagine God witnessing it all, saying, “That’s my Son. As some have said, ‘He has done all things well.'”

Life is terribly hard and difficult.

I’ve grown up and aged with Lent and the Passion Scriptures as an integral part of most of my springtimes. The Gospel accounts of the apocalyptic drama of the death of Jesus endure as the most pivotal texts I’ve ever read. The ol’ heart breaks over and over as Jesus breaks the bread and says, “This is My Body,” this common, nothing-special loaf of bread people use and abuse and discard without a second thought, and “This is My Blood,” this ordinary glass of wine. A glass of wine– big deal. A strife-sowing Jew– big deal. “One of you is going to betray me, and it would be better for you if you had never been born.” It must have taken Jesus a long time to compose Himself before He could even get all those terrible words out of His Throat.

“Ecce homo.” “Behold, the man.”

Yesterday I saw a homeless man, wrapped in a blanket, with long, dirty hair and blank eyes walking along Denny Way by the Seattle Center. The everyday news has plenty of stories about the innocents of the world, near and far, crushed and annihilated by life in the cruelest ways.

Every day a heart beats, and breaks, and there is no hiding from it.

Jesus is Lord and Messiah, we say– difficult, abstract concepts, with lots of theological baggage, and that’s fine.

Better still, Jesus is my friend, my hero, my brother. He has made us all sisters and brothers, and children of the eternal Father of us all. About that, on this Friday before Easter, I feel good!

You have one of those things, don’t you? You’re minding your own business, and it whacks you upside the head.

Again. And again. Just a small thing, but it keeps getting the better of you. You don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Who really cares if people ask, “How are you?” but don’t answer the question when you ask it back. Rationalize it any way you can, but still, you brood over this. You rehearse scenarios in which you will somehow alter the conversation in such a way that your antagonist suddenly understands his faux pas, and gains insight into why “HAY” is actually sort of a rude question in the first place, especially when it’s asked of someone who is at work, which is the opposite time and place of the time and place when one can honestly answer the question.

“This person,” I say, “is an emotional fascist. He demands that I answer the question, but refuses to answer it himself. And what a fool I am not to have a better set of stock responses to that question. Fool I am that I take the question personally. Fool! Blasted out of my hard-gained equilibrium by the same little thing time and again.”

Fast forward 100 years. “He endured great and grievous, dark and dangerous spiritual trials,” says His Holiness. “Only a genuine saint such as he could have borne up under the countless interrogations directed at him so many times, for so many years. ‘How are you?’ they persisted. Our saint smiled, in his heart prayed, ‘Father! Forgive them!’ and said, ‘I’m okay!'”

“That is a great spiritual trial?” some would laugh. “How the great saints will laugh!”

The great spiritual trials of the saints have been the fiercest affairs. Our age has been blessed with outstanding examples of bravery, courage, fortitude, and faith: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced trials I don’t know how anyone could have faced.

“The dark night of the soul” has the romantic appeal one isn’t surprised at, coming from Carmelite poet St. John Of The Cross.

Mother Teresa underwent a lengthy dark night, a period of aridity, of doubt. She persevered throughout this great spiritual trial.

“Where are my great spiritual trials?” I have asked. What experiences have I had that outside observers would find impressive? In my mind, there have been some, but I hesitate to compare them to the tangible and intangible tortures inflicted upon others, saints and otherwise.

But that’s what the spiritual trials want– underestimation. The occasional burst of ugly profanity– not a big deal! It happens involuntarily, and would take an effort to eradicate that you’re not quite willing to undertake, so it’s a spiritual trial you haven’t the will to engage and overcome. You laugh to hear it described as a “great spiritual trial,” because if it was that momentuous, you would join the battle and prevail.

After you defeat it, you might think, “That wasn’t such a great spiritual trial after all,” but no matter. You honestly faced an issue that was compromising your better self, and defeated it.

Along the road, we are beset by plenty of these trials, these opportunities, all this baggage that weighs us down. Better to defeat a “great spiritual trial” and wonder how great it really was than to be defeated by a spiritual trial I allow to become greater than me because I refuse to take it seriously!

That starry sky at night, all those stars, galaxies: God is something like that. The rolling ocean: that too. Mountains a few can climb, but most can’t: those also work.

A group of beautiful, glowing orbs? Oh yes– the Sephirot!

We naturally back our way into the most authentic “religious practices” without a thought. In the right lane on the highway, cars merge from the onramp, and a driver naturally adjusts his speed to accommodate the onramp’s merging traffic. People usually do that for you, and you do it for them. If someone doesn’t, he probably had a good reason. You do unto others as you like them to do unto you, and you do not condemn the innocent.

The Sephirot, as representative of God, includes some divine characteristics, some of which can seem to conflict. Martin Buber’s “Tales Of The Hasidim” is full of stories relevant to that.

One such set of characteristics pairs “rigor” and “mercy.” Characteristics we all possess and sometimes struggle to balance.

These old musical groups from as far back as the ’60s still go out on the road and perform, as long as there’s an audience, and as long as there’s a semblance of the group. The so-called Somethin’-Somethin’s, say, had a #1 hit in 1964, which was recently used in a commercial for a fantastically popular shoe somewhere, and now that group has an audience there. Thanks to record company lawyers, the great-great-great grandson of the guy who played drums during the group’s only recording session now has the rights to the name. Four other guys are recruited, and these are the Somethin’-Somethin’s! Some obscure musicians get a gig, and lots of happy people enjoy the concerts.

At a kitchen table, sits a grandson of someone who bought the group’s only album when it was first released. He stumbled across it in his grampa’s house, and it touched him in a way little had, before or since. He youtubes this group’s shows, filled with disdain for the entire concept at work in this promotion.

Now they’re coming to his town, but there is no way he will go, because not only are they not the Somethin’-Somethin’s, they are the Anything But The Somethin’-Somethin’s. Had they changed the name a bit to acknowledge the reality of the situation, maybe he would go, but the artifice is deeply offensive.

This is understandable to anyone who has seen a favorite group replace a member and then act as if nothing had happened.

A group is coming to my town for maybe the first time ever, a favorite old group I’ve never seen. Research has revealed that only one of the four members is from the classic line-up that recorded those old albums.

Rigor kicks in. It’s not really them!

But a band can’t always hold onto members, whose careers can end for any number of reasons.  Can a fan say, “The new guys aren’t as good as the old guys, nor do they have their vision?” No. The new guys might be superior musicians, in the sense of combining technical ability and musical inspiration. The band as is might actually be better than before, although there’s no way of knowing that, the previous musicians being no longer around for comparison purposes. Do I know how long the “old” musicians had been in the band? No. Do I know how long the “new” musicians have been in the band? No. Do I know why the “old” musicians had been in the band? No. Do I know why the “new” musicians are in the band? No.

Rigor insists that reality be respected. This is not the same group of musicians one came to love so long ago, and those musicians will always hold first place in one’s affections for that group. That can’t be ignored.

But “mercy” also has a place. One decides fairness dictates that one give the “new” group a chance. It’s probably nobody’s fault that it isn’t the old group. And, as with all the things one loves,  some things can be understood, accepted, and charitably overlooked.

We can’t say big questions aren’t being answered. We can’t say nothing ever changes.

“Truth springs out of the earth,” a Psalm says. Sometimes it’s not a truth, but a theory, a hypothesis, an idea, that, despite its lack of definitivity, suddenly emerges as a dominant reality.

Forty years ago, I didn’t think I’d be alive now, but health and mortality have changed so much since then that, decades ago, I faced the idea that I was more likely to live to 100 than to die by 50.

In a college class, we discussed an idea that has since been one of my keys to understanding. A thesis has an antithesis, and the two will come to a synthesis– a new thesis. Countered by its own antithesis.

Everybody has wondered, what existed before the Big Bang? Where was the Big Bang? What was it? What was the context for it? And if and/or when we learn the answers, we’ll surely think, “That is so obvious!”

It’s not surprising that a lover of carcaradon carcarias, the Great White Shark, also loves Black Holes. There’s got to be some really cool stuff in those things! A “singularity–” that’s what’s in one, and that is an invisible, tiny piece of infinity.

The “multiverse” is becoming a household word. We have our universe, but is there any reason why this has to be the only one? No. Where is our universe? Our universe raises the same questions the Big Bang raises.  

“This universe is governed by certain laws and realities that effectively create a self-contained system of which its boundaries are such that we cannot as yet perceive of them as such. Furthermore, such a universe as this can only exist within a larger, superstructural framework of such a nature that, within it, individual universes come to exist.”

That sounds reasonable.

One thesis has been that this universe is the one and only universe. The antithesis is that this is one of an untold number of universes. The synthesis is that we can take all these multiverses and lump them together as the one universe, which I define as “everything there is.”

So, what about the singularities, and the Big Bang? No one knows what happens with a singularity, but when a singularity is explained, when the Big Bang is explained, the connection is magnificently obvious– that tiny, invisible piece of infinity was the fuel for the Big Bang, the seed that grew the universe.

In another universe, a Black Hole evaporated after its singularity evolved into this universe, which derives all its material from material absorbed by that Black Hole in its universe. In turn, our universe creates objects that become Black Holes with singularities.

Maybe not all singularities become Big Bangs. Maybe not all Big Bangs result in long-lived, complex universes like ours.

But I’m happy that, when my son asks me about the universe and the Big Bang, I’ll have more to tell him than anyone told me when I was growing up!

I am not decisive about Spring, except that it’s a season, and as long as three months can be long. If a February day feels all Spring and a March day feels all Winter, Spring has the flotational quality a season has when it is not just an interval of time, but a state of mind.

A Chameleons album, “Script of the bridge,” begins with a man softly quoting Sophocles: “In his Autumn before the Winter, comes man’s last, mad, surge of youth.” The beginning of an excellent album.

“What on earth are you talking about?!” protests his mother. It’s from a British TV show.

There we have the poignancy of life, that the mindset of WInter is present in Autumn to a man who has not yet cut himself off from his personal Springtime and to the Summer that the cycle of life would have recently ended. 

When we change the clocks twice a year, one despairs of beleagured integrity holding onto its rightful place in the world. Not rarely do we see hard numbers rounded off, intricate philosophies reduced to slogans, but beneath the easily tarnished surface perseveres the resilient bedrock of empirical reality.

The Earth goes around the Sun, and the way we tilt decides the length of daylight all around the globe. Equatorial peoples have an experience of the Sun, and daylight, decidedly different from polar folk, with variances in between.

So we have equinoxes and solstices, themselves overlapping over areas which include places with slightly different schedules. This year’s vernal equinox arrived March 20th at 9:57am, although Monday the 17th, the Sun rose at 7:17am and set at 7:17pm. That was the local equinox, and a good example why St. Patrick’s Day is another good choice for first day of Spring.

When the Sun sets after 7:00, that is not Winterish, but with the latest adjustments to Daylight Savings Time, we now have that extra hour of daylight arriving in Winter. 

March is not synonomous with Winter, although most of the month falls within Winter. June doesn’t seem Spring, September doesn’t seem like Summer, December doesn’t seem like Autumn. Although the symptoms of seasons overlap, and someone’s experience of the weather of a day will correspond to their idea of exactly what conditions exemplify the experience of a particular season.

March 20th seems an arbitrary time to begin Spring, but it’s the soundest science. It’s not an emotional decision, an agricultural construct, or a convenience to a year’s calendar. Spring arrives when the Earth is at its point in the orbit when this part of the Earth begins having the amount of daylight that indicates that the conditions of long nights and dormant earth are over.

Spring is cherry blossoms and thunderstorms, and, officially, the most precise equations of deepest, darkest, interstellar science!

As Winter ends and Spring begins, with Lent underway, St. Patrick’s Day arrives.

“Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day,” goes the saying. Who are they, then– the Irish?

If grandparents from Cork make one Irish, I’m Irish. If curly hair, freckles, a Donegal tweed hat and a blackthorn walking stick make one Irish, I’m Irish. If loving the woods, the ocean, the mountains, all of creation, one’s faith, and delighting in the written and spoken word and music and whiskey and stout make one Irish, I’m Irish.

If one’s people have been despised, starved, and disenfranchised in their own land and then despised where they sought refuge, I’ll call that Irish.

If your people have a history of prejudice and xenophobia, that’s Irish.

St. Patrick’s is a day to remember, educate, and celebrate.

Bushmills was long the Irish whiskey of choice in my family, before Jameson became ubiquitous. We then learned of Bushmills reputation as a Loyalist brand, and long shunned it, but Bushmills is Irish, is it not? As Irish as those of any part of Ireland are Irish. What people call themselves is one thing, but Ireland is one place, and its people, one people. Subject to deadliest dispute, of course, but, as humans are entitled to claim all the universe as our own, so we Irish can claim all Ireland as our own, as the Irish flag claims orange.

Abraham had this coversation with God. Would not God spare Sodom if even ten righteous men lived there? Had that conversation gone a little further, I think God would have spared Sodom if just one righteous man was there. Let me, then, not condemn Bushmills if one righteous man works there. That possibility exists as long as I cannot say for sure that is not the case, and I am not the guy in the position to decide such things.

Long ago, my grandparents and all their people lived in Ireland. Those grandparents were among the millions who emigrated, under duress, to the United States. But as a family we remember where we came from, as Christians in the human family remember Adam and Eve’s Eden. Mistakes were made, In Eden, Ireland, and every elsewhere, but even as we deservedly  sit in sackcloth and ashes, we celebrate the positive, glad to walk in woods full of streams and birdsong, to read Ulysses, A Pagan Place, Synge, Beckett, Wilde, Yeats, to listen to Rory Gallagher, Sinead O’Connor, Thin Lizzy, Stiff Little Fingers, Van Morrison, U2, My Bloody Valentine, The Chieftains, The Undertones, to drink in Irish pubs, shouting over the uillean pipes, fiddles, tin whistles and bodhrans, to eat corned beef, potatoes and cabbage, to drink Guinness, Jameson, Harp, Bailey’s, Murphy’s, Smithwick’s, to cheer on the Irish football team, glad to wear green, thankful for all our terrible beauty, glad to be Irish, glad to be human, glad to be alive! 

Between the heartwarming of Christmas and the soulstirring of Easter, we have the work of Lent to do.

Jesus also had that work of life to do.

Forty days in the desert and the temptations were incumbent upon Him at that stage in His life, although it might have seemed counterintuitive. He went public at His Baptism, then disappeared, when a publicity-minded adviser might have suggested He take advantage of His new visibility. “Well, the Son Of God was here a second ago, but He disappeared! Anybody seen the Lamb Of God?” Probably seemed flaky.

Major life changes of that scale often arrive unanticipated. Parents ponder when to have a child, but sometimes the child arrives years earlier than planned. We see someone at work one ordinary day, and never see him again. A tree grows in a place where, maybe 100 years ago, someone said, “That’s not a good place for a big tree.”

If a Christian doesn’t give up something for Lent, I think it’s because it’s hard even for an adult to give up chocolate for Lent.

When I see someone eating Easter candy during Lent, that’s shocking to me, and I laugh at myself, but it’s still shocking. My rationale, since Easter candy is on sale before Ash Wednesday, is that I can have Easter candy before Lent. I always give up chocolate and candy for Lent. When a social occasion including chocolate falls during Lent, one’s responsibilities as a gracious guest sometimes dictate having chocolate, or alcohol. It might be an occasion I’d rather avoid altogether, which is mortification enough, as is having chocolate I would rather avoid. I can always abstain after Easter for as many days as I failed to abstain as compensation.  

One can undertake arduous trials during Lent. He can attempt to be “the master of his domain” from Ash Wednesday through Easter, and also have no candy, chocolate, meat, or alcohol.

One can take the positive approach of undertaking a healthy activity for Lent instead (or in addition to an abstinence). Because a walk around the block after dinner is easier than giving up chocolate.

An Irishman can abstain from corned beef, Guinness, and chocolate shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day. Poor St. Patrick might be mightily embarrassed when people beseech the Church to say it’s okay for them to have corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day, although it’s a Lent Friday. And what happens? The Church says it’s okay. Is that okay? Yes, that’s okay. These are just some of those “human regulations” anyway. If people need their corned beef even on a Lent Friday, and good Catholic butchers, shopkeepers, and publicans are depending on selling the usual amounts of that, let’s not make the matter more important than it really is. How important is it? Well, if people are taking it to the Church and begging for relief, you might well and with good reason beg to differ, but you can’t tell them that’s not important. Better to have God ask, “Why did you let people eat corned beef on a Lent Friday?” than “Why didn’t you let them?” The former rhetorical question is easier to answer than the latter.  

When Lent becomes an exhausting ordeal, it’s not because of the Church, which actually makes Lent easy. People between 18 and 60 are supposed to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, although one can observe that and still have three decent meals. We’re also not supposed to eat meat on Fridays. That’s really it.

As a 52-year-old, it occurs to me: only (God willing) seven more years of Lent? Is the AARP that powerful? Maybe I should join!

The Church has plenty of suggestions. We’re encouraged to abstain from meat every day of Lent, and every Friday, and emphasize prayer and almsgiving. Most well-spent is the time we use cultivating awareness of our complete dependence on God, and placing ourselves (poor as we might realize we, someway or other, truly are) in solidarity with the people commonly known as “the poor.” We could resolve to be consequently and practically mindful and productive throughout all the year. 

Instead of merely admiring the plastic baby Jesus in its crib, we can see the babies and families in shabby, shady circumstances, and try to help these brother and sisters of the real Jesus and ourselves. Instead of merely pondering the Resurrection, we can intervene on behalf of those seemingly condemned to merely suffer without hope in this life. 

We can make Lent complicated, although the Church keeps it simple. We live complicated lives, and our Church is complicated, but God keeps these essentials simple: love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself (which, of course, is complicated)!

Upon learning of an impending birth, I admire the bravery of the parents.

They’ve heard the stories about how much it costs to raise a child from birth to college. They’ve heard all about the dangers of the world, the pressures upon families. We’ve seen first-hand the astonishing, unprecedented, unthinkable leaps of progress and creativity in technology that have made life today radically different than it was just 40 years ago, when the microwave oven was the latest thing.

A kid today will not only want the same old candy and treats that are so much more expensive than in my day. He will want things I don’t even know about yet, which will do things he will make them do that I will not be able to make them do.

That’s about the half of it.

A person goes into parenthood knowing he or she carries the same genes responsible for his own parents’ inabilities to parent better than they did, which, had they done, might have produced a more capable adult likely to be more competent at parenting than he will be.

If the child was to be a predictable offshoot of he and his partner, that might be provided for in advance. But who knows which relative on which side of the family, which odd mutation owing to what innocuous environmental factor, will tilt the child’s essence into a realm into which the parents might have little or no insight or access?

Often, we didn’t really know our parents; how they got to be that way; how we have become the way we are.

My two-year-old son looks at a favorite drawing of puppies and ducks and emits a laugh I’ve never heard anywhere before.

One must resort to the most obvious truths sometimes when delving into the most obscure mysteries we must somehow incorporate within the worldview we construct, the map that has both finely-detailed regions and vast “parts unknown.”

Every person has a mother and father, and every person is part of the human community, which becomes a bit more elaborate, exotic, and extensive with the addition of every single person.

Walking down the street, one sees children, adults, people of all ages. Children not with their parents, parents without their children, individuals alone, with friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, strangers. So many people could be your parents; your children; your spouse; your siblings.

As a son leaves his father and mother and becomes a father, so his son leaves him and becomes a father. Somehow, he has made it through the expenses, the genetic idiosyncracies, the dangers, the educational system, and acquired everything needed along the way.

The father and son have had their unique relationship, triumphs and struggles, not because of anything historically extraordinary, but simply in the natural courses of daily life.

A person is an individual: a son, daughter, father, mother, a soul in life among souls in life. The parent, the child: these are the relationships I understand best from the perspective that these are the temporary vehicles of the beings called “souls,” who we all are, the children of God.

Screw up though we do, and must, we are loved. We will be taken care of.

“Be perfect, as I Am perfect,” God says. Looking up into the kindly face of God, I am encouraged to make my utmost effort.

Then I read the letters of Paul and James and think, “They’re so right! I am a liar, and a hypocrite. Although, I daresay, they are rather rude to say so.”

How is God perfect? Nowhere else do we leap so completely into circular logic that is essentially useless. God is defined as possessing all these positive attributes, so much so that He becomes rather a tool of the language. We take all these things and say, “The Sun was out, and it was warm, so it had to be a nice day.” Anything that is good, God has to have that, and everything God has, has to be good. Sure, but that comes with the territory.

“I Am Who I Am,” God says, a beautiful sentence inasmuch as every word is one syllable and has to be capitalized. That is one rare sentence.

God is always here, in the present tense. “Be perfect, as I Am perfect” conveys a wistfulness, a note of speaking to Himself, a whisper in a sleeping ear.

We just need to work with this word– “perfect.”

Once, a giant walked the Earth– Mr. Perfect. He sank basketball shots from the middle of the court with his eyes closed. His darts always hit the bull’s eye. He hit home runs. He bowled perfect games. He had blond hair and blue eyes. But even he eventually lost (to Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, of course).

In some cultures, legend has it that a perfect piece of art is impossible. That eleven-fingered lady on the Japanese six-panel screen– maybe that was, in that spirit of capitualtion to the inevitable, intentional. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers performed “Kings Road” on “Tomorrow with Tom Snyder” one night in 1981. They seemed out of sync until they neared the instrumental conclusion. Suddenly, the band clicked. “That,” I thought, “was perfection!” 8:08, 11:11:11 and 12:34:56 are three seconds of perfection on a digital clock. A colleague of mine had a saying– “Imperfection is perfection.”

Perfection is also an average day for a robot. Everything is done correctly.

Perfection and Heaven suffer the same stereotype– something finished. Static.

A human is different. To always exist in the present moment is a process, a carrying forward the progess made in the past and using it in the here and now and carrying it into the future where it will be discarded, or transformed.

To be who you are, to be someone whose beliefs, intentions, and actions are unified and consistent, despite doubts, mistakes, and opposition– that is the perfection I hope for.

“Make peace with your enemies while you are still on the way to court,” Jesus advises, lest you get tossed into prison. You won’t be released until you’ve paid the last penny.

So we should assume we are wrong about our enemies?

“Why not decide for yourselves,” Jesus also asks, “what is right?”

Some say you can learn a lot about someone from his friends, but you can learn more about someone from his enemies.

Depending how one defines “friend,” one can include most of one’s acquaintances among one’s friends. In a workplace of several hundred, one can work for decades and acquire so few enemies that they can be counted on one hand.

Those are the few who somehow instigate an antagonistic relationship through egregious, intentional violations of basic standards of decency.

We’ve all known a few back-stabbers. Grotesque abusers of power. People whose actions force one’s conscience to itch for vengeance. We want nothing to do with them, and wish we had never met them.

Such people are scorned. No way could we behave toward them in a way they could possibly construe as an endorsement of their conduct and behavior. We would have them understand that they have created a gulf of alienation.

But one appreciates that life is complex, that people come into circumstances that influence them badly, and they behave badly, sometimes in ways that seem personal, but actually are not. That person had a bad influence to act upon, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, his unwitting target.

Had someone else done the same to him, he would have wailed and gnashed his teeth. Then he would have thought, “If someone can get away with that, I will too, when it suits me.” Or, “That is one bad example I will never follow.” Two roads, either of which can be more appealing than the other at different times of life, with different stakes in play.

Playing the odds of personality, one assumes that another person’s inclination is toward relationships that are harmonious, and mutually beneficial. When the offender learns that his poor behavior causes more trouble than it’s worth, he will reform his behavior toward the end of restoring an amicable bond with those he has antagonized.

One has decided for himself what is right– that the enemy will learn from his mistakes; that one needn’t press the charge that the villain deserves definitive condemnation.

Wouldn’t an apology be nice? Yes, but in lieu of that, what also might suffice is that the enemy simply behave with enough decency that, one would think, he has to recognize the inconsistency of his offense, and realize that he had exhibited some poor behavior.

As we accuse others, we might also accuse ourselves, and as we forgive ourselves, we might also forgive others, and find common ground with anyone with no intention or desire to wind up in a hostile court.

And let us not lose any sleep just because, among all our friends, lurk a few enemies.