“Don’t resist evil,” “do good in return for evil,”
“bless those who curse you”… These biblical verses have baffled us and made our
selfish souls afraid multiple times, haven’t they? Frankly speaking, it’s so
far over our heads. Seeing how negligent we are towards our loved ones, we need
to rewrite the commandments, “Don’t resist good” and “bless those who show
mercy towards you.” This is the ABC of moral culture and respect; an
instruction for those who lag behind and cannot cope with the curriculum.
There are many people who are pleasant to deal with
only while everything is fine. Do they really deserve praise? Isn’t it natural
that people act nicely when everything is okay? One has to be a good person
even when everything goes wrong, right?
I recall my friends’ family who were so courageous as
to give birth to many children in the 1990s. That decade was a difficult time
in Russia. They literally didn’t have enough to eat. Their children seldom ate
candies. They were happy when they managed to buy a pair of boots or even a
pack of diapers. They couldn’t even dream of the things that we can easily
afford today, such as household appliances or new furniture for the children’s
room. Workers weren’t paid for half a year or more. Breach of trust and blatant
lies became the norm for the emerging “wild market”. Their family barely
survived thanks to random gigs, pickled food, and other tricks to make ends
meet.
My friend was distressed when he ran into another case
of ill luck or someone’s dishonesty. He had to rack his brain thinking how to
feed his growing family. His attempts to earn some money sometimes failed, and
their family budget was getting more and more strained. His young wife had to
pull the weight of the everyday household chores while being overburdened with
little kids. How surprisingly pleasurable it was to witness her talking her
husband out of his sad thoughts and urging him not to worry but instead wait
and be patient during the hard times.
It is a simple story with a straightforward lesson,
you might say — and you’d be right. However, doesn’t it often happen that
the head of the family, the breadwinner, when faced with a similar situation,
is caught in the crossfire? He has problems at work and immediately there are
unpleasant talks and arguments at home? His wife grabs at every opportunity to
show her discontent, to remind her husband of his missteps and failures since
the beginning of time. She beats up the person who is already wounded. She
makes him resist, defend himself and justify his actions, and sometimes to
counterattack until they both are too tired and too confused by the endless
explanations, causes, and effects.
“That which is falling, deserves to be pushed” —
this barbarian and immoral phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche isn’t declared
openly but is often present in people’s relationships de facto.
Without noticing it, you hit another person when he’s the most vulnerable and
where it hurts the most — the only reason for it being your
dissatisfaction with what you’ve got and your desire to have more because you
keep thinking “I am entitled to it” or “Everyone else has it, but I’m missing
out.”
We’re not talking exclusively about money here! Let’s
say, a child falls ill, she has problems at school, or a neighbor’s water pipe
was damaged and the water ended up your precious kitchen furniture. The
whimsical and comfort-loving beast inside us is looking forward to such
accidents. That one crisis is instantly followed by another one: the husband
and the wife lose their temper. They become irritated and want to criticize one
another. It happens exactly when the circumstances call for the need to support
one another!
Now tell me please: Isn’t it silly to damage your
relationship with the person you love right in the middle of some unpleasant
event? Is it a good way to solve your problems? Do you expect to feel better
after all that? Being patient and staying together is merely the most sensible
thing to do. It’s inexplicable and weird that people damage their
relationships, become inefficient and don’t demonstrate even those positive
qualities that they used to have. It is silly and naïve that they try to blame
the other person.
It is hard to remain a good person when something
doesn’t go according to your plan…
Contemporary people are hard to please. They don’t
lose their temper only if everything is fine. Any divergence from their initial
plan disrupts the equilibrium. Any adversity may lead them to waive their
obligations. Any non-fulfillment of their desires threatens to kick off a chain
reaction of their painful rethinking of everything in the world. Only God knows
how far the people who are influenced by these fluctuations can go!
In fact, our times aren’t particularly difficult.
Circumstances vary, but if you look back into the past, even the more recent
past, there have been more difficult times, haven’t there? Internal instability
encroaches on us simultaneously with an unparalleled improvement of living
conditions and a veritable revolution of comfort. We are conquered by a
multitude of pleasant trifles that accompany each of us from dawn till dusk.
Why is our willpower less reliable than it used to be? Strangely enough, the
more one gets, the less satisfied one becomes. Our society appears to be the
princess on a pea, who can’t tolerate even the slightest discomfort. Our
immunity to failures is too weak: every failure to accomplish our plans and
expectations threatens to destroy the bubble of “societal optimism” and cause
an epidemic of mutual frustration.
What would happen to those who are unsettled by
weather or less-than-perfect cappuccino foam, if they were miraculously sent
into the aforementioned 1990s? It’s fairly easy to guess, isn’t it?
There are few things about our time more disgusting
than lack of stamina and courage and almost complete absence of people who are
easy to deal with, rain or shine. People who you can lean on. People who don’t
re-consider their responsibilities all the time. People who remain true to
themselves. People who know both how to be abased and how to abound:
both to be full and to be hungry, as Apostle Paul says. People who are
happy not only when they get something pleasant but always, in spite of the
most peculiar and tricky situations.
“Don’t resist evil,” “recompense good in return for
evil,” “bless those who curse you”… Yes, it’s so far over our heads. Let’s try
at least not to add evil to evil and to remain good even when things go wrong.
In other words, let’s not increase entropy. There’s
enough entropy in this world already!
By Andrei Rogozansky
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds
Source: https://foma.ru/davay-possorimsya-ob-odnom-iz-samyih-uyazvimyih-mest-sovremennyih-brakov.html
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