Remorse

I read for the first time this morning Kahlil Gibran's addressing the issue "On Crime and Punishment." The phrase that grabbed me and sent me to find the rest was "And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?" It's a powerful piece of writing, one that makes me think from the perspective of the criminal justice system, but even more as a recovering compulsive overeater. It really doesn't matter whether we're thinking about the wrong people did us or the wrong we've done others. It says we're all equaled, all "sinners" and all "saints" or at least we're as high as the highest among us. Fascinating.

The perspective I see right now in reading this, the reason this draft has been sitting open on my computer for a while, is in looking at those who make my life uncomfortable. Through program I've come to see their behavior as the same as mine when I was struggling to like myself. The blame placed on me by the other is not my blame to adopt, as I was so quick to do for so many years. It's his or her own, and no matter what I do, I can't take away that blame, can't relieve him of it. Nor can I punish him for dumping it on me, for that only serves to give him another focus, to make his self-reproach something he can hide from himself in his anger at me.

I feel sorry for him, for I'm no longer playing the game, and I see his hurt, his misery. His remorse greater than his misdeeds -- and far greater than any punishment I could mete out.

God help us all.