3589 A question of morality

Monday, August 6, 2012

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

--  Isaac Asimov   --

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One of the books I have been reading has a set of topics for discussion at the end, one of which, details aside, asks if all people should be held to the same standards of morality, or should circumstances and a person's life experiences be taken into consideration?

Wow.

That's such a simple question, but not something we tend to think about when we make judgements about people.  We just do it.  If their standards are not ours, we take circumstances and the other person's life into consideration and understand and excuse them, or we don't and we condemn them.

After thinking about it, I realize that my own morality, my standard for myself, has gotten tighter over the years, but I am less likely to hold others to my standard.  I am more likely to be understanding (often), to the point of not even considering the deviations of others to be failings.  In fact, when you take conditions, circumstances, and needs into consideration, I can often find a kind of high morality behind even base acts.

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A friend mentioned to me that his son had been convicted of a felony, and asked if that mattered to me.  I said no, it didn't matter to me what he may have done, what matters is what he is doing now.  And that's really true.  I didn't even ask what the felony was.

I like me.   That's not a terrible thing.  Sometimes I drive people nuts by asking why they do or did something.  They say it doesn't matter, but to me it does.  I need to understand why.  I need to understand where it fits in their life experience.

The greatest frustration is when I don't understand.
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1162 Validation

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Dr. Phil said something on his show the other day that stopped me cold. He just threw it out as a casual comment, and it's one of those things that "everyone knows", but until you hear someone say it, make it "real", it's just passed off.

He was talking to a husband who had hurt his wife's feelings somehow. The husband wished she'd just "get over it". (I think - I wasn't watching, just caught it in passing.) Anyway, Dr. Phil said something like "She will never get over this until she knows you fully understand what this did to her."

My head went ka-boing.

I have often been accused (by men, mainly) of not "letting it go". I do tend to hang on to some hurts and chew them over and over. Other hurts I do let go of. What's the difference? Yes, it does come down to whether or not I believe the other person fully understands the impact of their actions. If they understand, I can let it go. They don't even have to apologize - just understand how it affected me. Until they do understand, I do keep coming back to it, and a lot of men will refuse to look at it. They'll say "It's in the past", or "Don't go there", but it's not in the past. The effect is still with me! I want you to understand how I felt!

Your not wanting to understand makes me feel like you don't care.

That's probably why my sister and I are both still hung up on what our parents did to us (Sister more than I, actually). They are both dead now, but neither our mother nor our father ever recognized how their emotional and physical battering destroyed us kids. Sister and I have managed to salvage our self-respect, but both brothers have serious problems, and youngest sister drank herself to death. Sister and I can't "let go", because our parents never understood that they hurt us. And now they never will.

It's also why I still carry so much resentment toward Ex#2. He never understood my feelings about the crap he did, and didn't want to. There's no point in talking with him about any of it, because he still won't care how I feel. It's too threatening to him. So I carry around the resentment.

Ok. Now is there any way to drop it? I was able to release a lot of anger toward my parents by thinking, "Ok, they were sick. They didn't refuse to see, they were completely incapable of seeing." That won't work with Ex#2 because I know that although he does have some emotional problems, he IS capable of seeing. There were occasional glimpses of understanding. He's going to be a bit harder to let go of.
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