24 October 2016: This wonderful piece by my former colleague is absolutely today's good thing.
Some good stuff:
"The main point of both of these stories, as I read them, is that forgiving someone who has done one a great wrong is unnatural. It defies expectations because it defies human nature. Over millions of years, both nature and culture have endowed us with a strict sense of justice where our own interests are concerned. We want the people who have hurt us to suffer, and, the vast majority of the time, our poets gratify our passions. The suitors all die by the hands of Odysseus and Telemachus. Gaston plummets to his death while trying to kill the Beast, Voldemort sort of blows up. The bad guys all get their comeuppance.
Except when they don’t. In the the occasional work of literature like Atsumori, or the story of Joseph, we get a sense of what a rare and wonderful thing true forgiveness can be, both in the seeking and in the granting. When it happens in literature, it frustrates our expectations and forces us to re-examine our tastes–and if we are lucky it makes us better people. When it happens in real life, I suspect, it has the potential to change the world."
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