Is Grace In Your DNA?

Grace is eternal and important. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (book 2) begins this way (Gregory Hays Translation, emphasis mine).

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at any relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

This is about grace, and the predictable folly of people. Heather and I were commenting on finding some threads here and in the Bible. Phrasings that are the same throughout all types of wisdom literature, from the ancient world to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The human condition is eternal. Folks will be meddling. Deal with it. In advance. Some will be arrogant. Deal with that, too. Because that’s how we all are. Meddling, ungrateful arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. In varying degrees and in varying times, but that’s the condition of humanity. We have met the enemy…

So why is it then that we are quick to speak about slights that happen to us? Why is it that we’re surprised by petty behavior, why do we get aghast when people reveal themselves to be imperfect? Why can’t we just show Grace? Why is this a surprise to anyone, and why do we insist–like Yossarian–that the slights are happening to us? People are petty and mean, and they just don’t know any better. And when we lose hold of who we are, of our humanity, we’re just the same. Easily given over to rage. Easily baited into doing things that we’re ashamed of. A stupid bull.

Why is it that we get predictably angry when someone’s actions indicate that they see us in a different way than we see ourselves? Why do we let people’s predictable barbs to our ego make us respond with threats, anger and the Don’t you know who I am BS?

Grace is important when we think humans might be dishonest. We’ve all been dishonest, told lies for expedience sake at a minimum. When other people tell them, why do we try to play "gotcha games" and try to get them to lie prostate on their feet. The unraveling of Tiger Woods shows us that what people present isn’t the same as who they are.

When people are caught in a lie, we see such wildly implausible stories covering that up. Think of the machinations that both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush went through to cover up deceits of different types.

Our companions are going to be ungrateful. The expectation of gratitude is nuts: we do a favor so we can get our "reward" in the form of debt slavery or in the form of gratitude. We remind people of the service we rendered that maybe wasn’t that great as a way of being valuable. We don’t just silently serve. When we notice that people are ungrateful, let’s look at ourselves: why do we expect gratitude anyway. Forgive that sin, and realize that it’s your own mistake and your own fault when that comes up.

In organizations its the same way: people are going to screw up, they are going to be disloyal and pursue their own priorities. Others still perceive themselves as not being well recognized. People get removed from leadership or get taken out with no real understanding that we’re imperfect machines that will occasionally lash out.

All of this stuff, all of the lack of forgiveness that we exhibit is caused by what we see as affronts our sense of importance. We think we are more important than we are–when we’re a mere speck. We think that what we do matters. We can use wrath as a tool to make ourselves more important than others…or we can live in harmony and know in advance people are going to be jerks and just forgive them in advance.

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