The hitter can never be the judge

yet neither can the receiver of the blow tell you how hard it was

It must be G. K. Chesterton who says something along the lines of: angels abroad, devils at home. I expect that many of my readers would be in agreement that it mostly is at home where we usually are on our worst behaviour. It is quite easy to, and often indeed do we put on an adorable front before the public, but as soon as one is at home, he goes back to being little lucifer. With our families, room-mates, and flat-mates, we often are impatient, inconsiderate, and unsympathetic. Courtesy, it seems, is for the visitor that comes in today and has to leave later that evening, not for a sibling or a friend we have shared a roof with for years. It certainly would not be easy to admit, but the truth is that it is often just as difficult for another person to live with us as it is difficult for us to live with them. To echo C. S. Lewis: in each of us, there’s something to be endured. Something that people have to tolerate.

To the people close to us, we somehow learn to say things that just as statements appear innocuous but in reality are barbed arrows aimed at their hearts. When confronted about our words we feign and claim innocence, and complain of how someone would make a fuss about such little a thing. The truth, in fact, is that we wanted to get them so hurt by our words that they ended up making such a fuss. We usually resort to this sort of tactic when we know we are obviously powerless along all other lines, for example, before a parent.

One is sometimes called to settle a brawl between a couple, between friends, between a parent and their child, and immediately gets to see just how both people are being unfair to the other person, yet they insist that it’s them who has been, and is being, disrespected, hurt, and unheard. We scratch like wild cats, but bleed at a touch (‘stern to inflict’, but not ‘stubborn to endure’).¹ We know well enough how to excuse and colour our own deeds, but we are unwilling to receive the excuses of others.²

Here’s a passage from Edward P. Jones The Known World that I have found very interesting:

The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.

Yet…

The receiver too likely will claim that the blow was so hard it almost killed him, when the truth might be that it was just but a touch. I myself have done precisely that several times. And I imagine that I have no few companions.

---

1. C. S. Lewis in The World’s Last Night, Lilies That Fester

2. Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Of a Good Peaceable Man