Is She Even for Real?
True lessons cloaked in fiction
Sometimes I don’t know what to make of her. Is she even for real?
Why does she not speak rudely when someone speaks meanly to her? Does she acknowledge her lack of worth? Can she not think of any witty or sarcastic word to make her detractors feel ashamed?
Out of curiosity, I asked her one time, and this was her reply, “Maybe she was just having a bad day.”
I did not want to push the issue but in my mind, I asked, “Is that all you can say? Is having a bad day a valid reason to be mean?” Such people deserve an eye for an eye — rudeness for rudeness, a mean word for every mean word they say.
Why does she always try to see the best in people? Why think of a good excuse when you’re already faced with what is bad?
Sometimes I’d like to pity her. It’s not fair to be kind to people who are mean.
Sometimes, however, I can’t help but wonder. Would it have been better if she scolded every rude person she met? Would she have been happier had she thought of evil instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt?
I must admit. Hurting people does not take away your hurt. Being evil to those who are evil doesn’t make them good. And judging those who judged you can never make you feel any better about yourself.
Maybe it isn’t pity after all that she deserves. Maybe it’s something else. Something that makes me a little envious of someone who has a far deeper peace and happiness than those of us who think we can force goodness out of the evil things we prefer to do.
“It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
“What then?”
“Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
-Helen Burns and Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)
“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” - Matthew 5:44-45 (NABRE)