'Humility Is Attentive Patience.'

-Simone Weil

I am entirely aware that sometimes on here when I go off on a tirade about compassion, my diction can get a bit too soaring or florid. Sometimes both, frankly, and when I get to the inestimable consequences of compassion my tone is apt to run from hortatory to incantatory through beatific and on to splenetic long before righting itself and sticking nicely to the pragmatic.

However.

My excuse is that what I am talking about is every bit as powerful as I make it seem. It is like a drug: its effects are that shocking, marked, and fast acting. And yet, most of us do not avail ourselves of it, except perhaps with those closest to us. And that stands to reason. Family members are on the one hand easier to understand than those we know less well; on the other, our hobby and pool of defendants would quickly evaporate were we to spend all our time divorcing and disinheriting our relatives. Given that fact, it makes sense at some point simply to accept that Aunt Jane always talks to much about Shih-tzus and Cousin David will probably never fully surmount his persecution complex.

Fine.

But leaving aside altruism (which we already were, anyway; admit it), it benefits every individual's own psyche to stop seeing others as failed versions of ourselves. Even if we share some similar goals - getting ahead in the company, working on our marriages, shopping less, not drinking anymore, being more involved in the community, cooking at home more often, working out again, whatever they might be - we are going at them with radically differing histories, distinct personalities, weaknesses, and strengths, and perhaps for vastly different reasons in the first place.

It was probably Thérèse of Lisieux who had this additional insight into handling difficult interactions with irritating interlocutors, particularly those whose failings seem most obvious to us, those whom we know enough about to wish instinctively to judge in their failure: Yes, maybe he did do it again -- but what about all the times he succeeded, and we weren't there, and he was too modest to gloat, or even tell us quietly of his unnoticed, private success?

I think looking at the evident weaknesses of others from that perspective is profound. We don't even need to do any uncomfortable self-inquiry to come up with something we ourselves recently struggled with, which is an equally useful but more obvious and labor-intensive strategy. We just have to acknowledge that we can't possibly know everything about another, and that that other might well be doing some rather good stuff while we're not around. And, that he might additionally have the virtue of humility, and thus even be worth emulating in that respect!

I say it is like a drug because whatever method we use to get there once we feel a sympathy with our brother and his situation, the anger dissolves just as surely as morphine kills pain. If you can imagine that someone is driving aggressively (I use driving so much because it does truly render people insane when they are trapped in their little boxes and feel so powerless about many factors and any little thing can seem a tremendous injustice) because his wife just had a baby or because he needs to throw up, you immediately lose the anger. If someone's stereo is playing crappy music too loud, it's not much of a stretch to recall that most of us were young at one time, too, and wanted to be cool and to display our coolness when possible so that it could be validated by others, as coolness, just like wit, style, or 'success,' is a cultural commodity which can only be conferred on an aspirant by the recognition of its presence by a consensus of the relevant audience. He's young, the music's bad, I'm not his target audience: so, so what? After the next light I can go back to listening to the riveting story about heirloom orchids in Florida.

I like the Thérèse suggestion because even if we were never young ourselves, and even if we can come up with absolutely no failings of our own to gain us conditional entry into some grandiose vision of the Mystical Brotherhood of Common Human Frailty, we can easily imagine that the individual tiresomely prattling on to us about the after-market package he bought for his Lexus could just have donated to the Red Cross, and is thus as short of sense as he is glucose and the blood to carry it to his brain.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.

So Internet dating. It is worse. It is different. The latter is less amusing than the first, so I'll start there.

It is, I admit, different in some ways that do not markedly suck. One convenient aspect is that we both are at least openly owning our desire to find someone. Maybe you just want to 'date,' while I am looking for something heady and deep -- but at least we both know the other is looking for something. This shared knowledge makes first steps far less awkward -- and far more likely to succeed -- than finally acting after months of worshipping from anear the hot blonde in the next office, about whose romantic life you may still know nothing. That part I think is handy.

So, too, do I think the upfrontness of other aspects of it is convenient. If I breed dogs and you hate them, I don't even need to 'talk' to you: I can just read it on your profile page and move on, before being wounded by this damning knowledge long after we've bared our electronic souls. Almost every reasonable 'fact' gets out there, up front, disclosed. Of course there might be lies, but let's assume there aren't: I know you have six kids, you know I am a millwright, you subscribe to Boating World and I make wine. It can sometimes be the details, the minutiae, of everyday life that kills or sustains things in that real life, so having some vague idea from the start as to how this person lives his or her days is not to be dismissed.

But.

On the other hand, we are all so terribly complex. Data don't make a person. And you certainly don't need to share the same, say, reading resume or hobby list, to fall deeplymadlypassionately. Moreover, I can read you off some version of my biography and you still will have no idea of who or what I am. Obviously, culture has its profound effects, but it is not the whole story of what constitutes an individual.

Still, though, I think this deliberateness and candor can act as a helpful filter, and sometimes people who meet first in person do not bother with enough factual information but rather rely on emotional information, which is arguably better turned to later in the relationship, when there is more to go on and a baseline has been set. If there really are things I don't want, such as your six kids, better to know that now than discovering it after I've been smitten with your raffish charm and muzzle-loader collection.

As well, too.

Additionally, it's different because it is cheap and low risk. This is not wholly in the positive column, but there are benefits. It is cheap because you don't even have to pay for a cup of coffee before hard-dropping someone after a series of emails that took a strange or scary turn, and it's low risk because you don't actually know any of these people (well, not usually, and I would hate that). So, if you can manage it, you can cultivate a different set of ethics that doesn't force you to humor fools or spend time with dullards out of a too-expansive sense of politesse. Unlike with acquaintances, friends, or lovers, you can set the exact second of the end of contact. For real, not just in vain hope of it remaining so. (Unless you happen to meet in real life after pushing 'block,' and I would hate that even more.)

It is also cheap because these people really adore coffee shops! Maybe they are all really just alcoholics, and scared that one glass of wine will lead to nine, at which point they will be once more sobbing in the arms of a stranger about the cat and couch they lost in their last ill-starred amour, but more likely it is because it is much easier to figure out how to divide the cost of one Darjeeling and one Oolong than it is a Delmonico, some scallops, an appetizer, a salad, an aperitif, a digestif, and an uneven distribution of glasses of wine. Plus, coffee shops are better lit than romantic restaurants, and the means of egress thus more easy to hold in one's sights.