Before You Condemn
When he was young, he thought certainty was strength.
He judged quickly, spoke sharply, and wore his opinions like polished armor. It comforted him to believe that ignorance belonged to other people.
Then life undressed him.
Grief came first. Then humiliation. Then the slow education of discovering that he had once mocked pain he did not understand and condemned choices he had never been desperate enough to make. The world widened. So did his shame.
Years later, when younger men came to him full of heat and easy conclusions, he did not answer them with contempt. He remembered the poverty of a mind that has not yet suffered enough to become tender.
“Take your time,” he told them. “Truth does not bloom in arrogance.”
He had learned that wisdom is not the absence of conviction. It is the presence of humility. It is knowing there was once a version of yourself who could not yet see what you now carry plainly in your hands.
Mercy, he found, was often just memory with the ego removed.
Thank you for spending time in the House of Curiosity. If you’d like to stay awhile, please subscribe—we appreciate the company in the dark.