Someday, I will learn not to dislike people before I get to know them. I just finished reading “Gone with the Wind.” I’ve always had a comfortable dislike relationship with Scarlett O’Hara. She’s a selfish, hard, cruel, workaholic, man-eater. Her word means nothing, there is not promise she won’t make or break, and she treats her nearest and dearest like dirt. Oh, and she dislikes her own children. Not I wonderful sort of person. And, after reading the book, she really is all of the above. But, I’m beginning to see another side of her. She’s got energy and a strength. She is utterly loyal to the few people she does actually love. She is a protector, willing to give aid and shelter to people she hates through thick and thin. Unfortunately, these are the traits that destroy her. Her strength walls her away and makes it impossible for her to feel or find love. Here desire to protect and defend makes her ignore her family and her children as she fights to provide for their physical needs, her utter love and devotion to the few means that she will waste her life loving another woman’s husband and neglecting all three of hers.
She’s a woman who managed to make all the wrong decisions at all the wrong times. And her virtues, without the benefit or consolation of religion, became only ropes to strangle her. It’s a terrifying read—to see how little good “virtue” actually does. I am not sure how the Stoics did it, but virtue without an external guide means nothing and can make nothing, and a person forgets it at their peril.
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