The Parable of Hidden Contempt

Two men always passed each other on the opposite sides of the road as they walked through town each afternoon. The man on the right side came to regonize the fammiliar face of the man on the left side. He would go about his day without much thought toward it.

Then, one day, the man who walked on the right side was leaving town when he ran into that fammiliar face. The man who always walked on the left side sneered, “Well what a surprise to see you here!”

“What’s the problem?”

“I always see you on the other side of the road, and I never see you smile or wave at me or anyone else. Nobody in their right mind acts that way. That’s not the kind of behaviour that belongs in this town.”

What the angry man didn’t see, was the whole world outside of his imagination. The angry man was so caught up in his thoughts, that he didn’t realize that he never smiled or waved to the stranger he was accusing. The spirit of anger is always hypocritical in ways like this.

The angry man, in his anger, had also beleived an imagined narrative about the stranger passing by. He did not see that the other man had no ill will or rude intentions. Rather, the angry man projected the nastiest things about himself onto someone else.

Remember this the next time someone tries to intimidate you: It is in wicked human nature to do one’s own worst fears unto others. A man who fears death will try to intimidate others with death threats. A man who fears he’s incompitent at his job will always be quick to point out the incompitence of his coworkers. Imagined possibilities and assumptions are treated as fact without any self-reflection or questioning.

Angry people saw the man on the right as foolish or inconsiderate, but that man was never troubled in life, because he knew not to take any thought or assumption seriously.