We think we are more evil than we really are. We think we sin more than we actually do.
Not because we are righteous, but because in an office next to a phone, in front of a keyboard and a monitor, you don't have a whole lot of room to manoeuvre. You are only as evil as your options, right?
You don't even lie that much. Not even white lies.
Tomorrow I travel out of town to attend the funeral of my brother-in-law's father.
Now, the crux: I don't like my brother in law. I don't mean the general grey absence of affection that most people feel (feel an absence?) for their in-laws. I mean I despise him. For things he failed to do, and mostly for not being ashamed of his failure. I have great contempt for him.
Also, I never knew the old man. I do have a picture in my head of a thin, tall, dark fellow with high cheekbones -- a rural face wearing an urban suit, smiling like a groom's father at the wedding almost ten years ago. I didn't even speak to him then. Just shook hands.
Tomorrow I will be standing by his grave, looking solemn, there because of his son. I would like to say to his son, "I wish there was less loss and sorrow in the world. I wish people never had to weep. I wish I was in Kampala with friends right now, and I wish your father was also elsewhere, perhaps at his farm, with his friends, and I wish all these grieving strangers had no cause for grief."
But I will not feel for him. I just do not feel for him.
So when the time comes, I will lie, and say, "I am sorry for your loss."
That is my sin of the week. A doozie.
"Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang on everybody,
There's a dead man trying to get out."
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