The bare bones of the facts

So do you think you'll stop seeing him?

The question shocked me. Until this point, stopping seeing him hadn't even crossed my mind, yet the person asking seemed to feel quite entitled in their reasoning. Will I stop seeing him? I took a beat, then shook my head. No. Of course not. My interlocutor was not pleased. This was not the answer they'd been hoping for. It was not, I guess, the correct answer.

The 'him' in question had hurt somebody. Not me, but somebody. His partner. I happen to be quite fond of both, and this discussion was only the result of hearsay. Reliable hearsay, but nevertheless, with details and circumstances severely skimmed.

Yet it was (to my interlocutor) outrageous that I would continue interacting with this man knowing that he had done something hurtful towards his partner. How could I condone it? How was it not clear to me that I had to cut this man out from my life at once and without mercy?

Except...Isn't everyone guilty of hurting someone at some point?

That was going to be my original title.

By the same logic, this very conversation ought not to be happening. After all, I know myself to have hurt people. Not in the same way, but I'm quite aware I've been the cause of pain, and sure sometimes it was inevitable (but does that make it forgivable?), and other times it wasn't.

I can't speak for the person I was talking to, though I'm quite sure they too caused someone at some point grief. Shit, haven't we all? And is it really okay for your friends and family to cut you out in punishment when you do something bad?

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,no?

Seems easy to sidestep that one. We make certain appendages to the phrase and modify it at will. Let he who is without recent sin. Let she who is with justifiable sin. Let he whose sins none of us here know so he can pretend to be without cast the first stone.

At what point does sin become unforgivable, not to the person directly affected by your sin, but to the surrounding community?

It's tempting, especially from afar, to cut things into crisp black and white strips. To reduce a person to the sum of their parts, to their actions (particularly the bad, morally reprehensible ones). From up close, you see the greys and while that can often muddy up your own judgment, I do think it also invites some clemency. Some understanding. We are, after all, flawed.

I see the man - this hurtful, easily ostracizable man - as vulnerable and tender. Gentle and funny. Charming and quiet. I see in him all these beautiful things, these human things. And find myself thinking of the little boy inside him who'd be so hurt if he was suddenly cut out.

It angered me that in no uncertain terms and in the span of few words, he'd been reduced to a lowlife. Some ne'er-do-well.

I understand his circumstances, which is odd, knowing him so briefly. So fleetingly. And perhaps I recognize in him the inescapable, pervasive shadow that dogs my own steps. What makes him unforgivable? That he is older? That he is not close enough to either myself or this other commentator to fall under the convenient umbrella of forgiveness and fault-blindness that is friendship?

It seems to me there's a double-edged sword here. Cutting out people can help protect you from hurt, surely. But it can also leave you pretty stranded.

Of course, there's a messiness, an undeniable danger to citing the all-too-familiar "you don't understand, it's complicated". We tend to use this excuse to condone and keep doing terrible things, taking comfort in this complicated state.

Often, things are much simpler than we make them out to be. It's hurtful to hear them reduced to the sum of their parts, but sometimes it's also necessary. I found myself thinking of various such unkind reductions in my past which, while hurtful, proved helpful and true. Often, we need to be shaken awake and see bad people for what they are.

There's a fine, blurry line. It's not always complicated, but it's not always clear-cut, either. I think when someone is hurting you directly, actively, you're more tempted to use the "it's complicated" excuse to perpetuate a situation. I think it's those cases when you need to be at your most wary.

But when you see the people around you stumble and make a mistake, even hurt somebody, maybe then you can afford to look at the multiple facets you know of this person and see them with compassion.

When I am still trying to wrap my mind around the complexity of you, it seems criminal to reduce you to a handful of snarled epithets.

Or maybe that's just the writer in me wanting to pick apart an otherwise black-and-white story.