Had a call just now from a friend who has her ups and downs.  She was up today, yesterday had apparently been a great day.   When she began telling the story I thought we were heading towards the delicious coldly-served revenge scenario she’d been sketching out for a while in regard to this particular person.

Instead she’d had a revelation, the person who’d hurt her was a damaged, suffering soul who was sorry for the behavior.  They’d spent a surprisingly lovely day together, spoke of and laughed about the various revenge scenarios that would have been richly deserved.  “I tell you, I feel light as a feather today, letting all that anger go,” she reported happily.

Inspired by our conversation I decided to call back the person who is the subject of A Puzzle for You and Psychic Role-play.   The puzzle was solved– be mild, direct, no need to bring up the guy’s worst, most annoying side, even when he says, with apparent conviction, that we should stay in touch.   I have nothing against staying in touch.  We had a few laughs and talked for a good while.  It was a most pleasant conversation.

Better to be mild than punitive, when the offense, in the larger scheme of life, harms only your perception of the other person.  It’s easy to reduce someone to the sum of their annoying faults, but there’s also a baby, probably worth saving, in that stinking bathwater.  

I shouldn’t really use that metaphor, though, I don’t have much use for babies.