I find I too often think of situations in terms of loss or gain, benefit or detriment. Almost below my consciousness, I tally some invisible point system on everyone I know, and I figure how much I've scored with someone (telling me how much I can get away with), or if I am in point debt, and need to butter them up a little. I don't know if other people do this, though I imagine they do — if somewhere within their brains they've numbered how well they've treated me, and it would give them allowances to ask favors of me, or if they need a better rating in my own gauges of their character. But even if everyone does something, as we may, it still does not make for virtue. Something tells me I shouldn't be thinking in terms of advantage, that a true heart does not so quantify.
Perhaps saints never have such a problem: they treat everyone the same, whether they've met them before or not, whether they be friend or foe: like a brother. Maybe even better than a brother. I know I am no saint, but it does not hurt to measure ourselves against a (rather) impossible standard, if only to see how it really should be done. How have they overcome the simple fact that the spirit is quite willing, yet the flesh so weak? Saints don't have it easy, in my comprehension of the matter: like all experts, they merely make it look easy. They, too, have struggled, but maybe the difference between their triumph and our failure is that they persevere on, while we accept that we are not perfect, and forget that our faults are faulty. Everyone does it, after all.
I think I will remind myself not to merely consider where I rate with anyone. In all likelihood, I will never be a saint, but that should not stop me from being a better person if I can at all help it. And I know I can. No, not everyone does it — but virtue is like that.
