There are occasions in life where what is natural feels right and ends up right. Some people have a knack for knowing what is right to do or being able to successfully intuit what will work the bets in any given situation. Other people lack that ability and have to make do the best with the skills and wisdom that they have available to them. Whether we have that sort of insight naturally or we simply suffer enough to develop some sort of wisdom and discretion, most of us at least manage to develop some sort of simulacrum of wisdom in dealing with life’s ridiculousness. Yet most of us also have areas in life where our wisdom falls far short of our normal standard, and where our folly threatens to undo much of our good.

For several days now I have been reading in some of the free time that I possess that I have not spent enjoying fine conversation or writing trying to gradually work my way through a very large biography of a founding father who appears rather alarmingly like myself in many rather disconcerting ways, from his horrific childhood to the mysterious tensions and divides within his own mind, to his almost compulsive need for openness and honesty. Whether we ascribe the ultimately fatal indiscretion of a fellow like Hamilton to pride or ego or to the demons of his own life that he was unable to ultimately overcome, we are faced with a difficult task in looking at people once we know the worse aspects of their nature in properly appraising and appreciating their character, setting the standard by which we are to be judged by our own mercy and consideration to others.

People often try various means of trying to deal with the struggles of their lives. Some people choose to be candid, sometimes uncomfortably so, in the knowledge that their candor will be used against them by those who are more unscrupulous but also more discreet. In these corrupt times it appears that a little bit of discretion and the willingness to make hollow apologies for one’s errors make everything alright even in the absence of genuine contrition. After all, few people believe there is any contrition for any offense other than being caught in flagrante delicto anyway. Unfortunately, our cynical society does not reward virtue because we happen to mistrust it. If we trusted virtue better, we might see more of it, even at the risk of disappointing us with the inevitable folly of people who would otherwise be wise.

Some people seek to constrain their actions so that they fail to act on the evil that they wrestle with, and such a response is not an unreasonable one so long as we understand that it does not make us superior to those who share the same struggles but who may choose to act in a more obvious way. To have hidden evil that one denies or masks is a greater evil than many of the evils that are more obviously seen. And yet to openly admit a struggle against evil and yet to struggle against acting on that evil is a difficult task that is worthy of great honor and respect. By admitting one’s struggle, one removes the taint of hypocrisy and suffers the blame as if one were an evildoer, and yet by struggling against acting on that evil one seeks to arrest its tendency to hurt others and puts others on notice to help hold one accountable to one’s desires to do what is right. If we cannot be absent the pull towards darkness, at least let us be absent either of a hypocritical or sanctimonious sense of superiority to those whose darkness is more obvious, and let us do all we can to overcome the darkness that we face, not only for our own sakes but also for those who may be hurt the most by our behavior.