When I wish someone good, it represents the right thing to do in any case. However, one day I found a very happy ancillary result of such a wish. Generally, I feel called upon to make this wish in a stressful moment because I feel the other person has treated me a way that takes the other person out of the moral sphere. That person violates the end principle by treating me as a means to that person's end. When someone cuts me off in traffic, it feels dangerous to me, stops my getting where I want to go, while the driver doing this gets her/his end by cutting me off. In that simple example, I wish the other good. If that wish, even prayer if you like, came true, the driver would not do what she/he did again. In the spirit that the feeling of good would bring, the other driver would understand and appreciate what happens as a real consequence of her/his driving for her/himself and for me and others. Once fully understood, perhaps even felt, the driver would take responsibility for the act and would want to choose a new way to drive that kept her/him within the moral sphere. That would be good.
Our identity and ego can resist logical or even forceful arguments against negative conduct that brings us out of the moral sphere, but when we feel the power of the good, of the right thing to do because of what really happens in consequence, the becoming self responds and our identity and ego may allow us to accept this new choice for the fulfillment of the good. When we choose the wish for good for those outside the moral sphere instead of the wish for revenge and punishment which may drive us and that person further outside that sphere, we act within the end principle and the moral sphere. When we choose revenge and punishment, we strive to make the other person a means to our end. When we choose good for that other, we wish that the good voluntarily becomes the end of the other.[126]
When we choose the I/Thou in response to a stimulus to the choice of anger, we have done something positive, and that choice places us within the understanding and responding of the becoming self. Happily, the opportunity to choose anger comes to us relatively infrequently. The rest of the day opens before us and asks how we might bring the unconditional and compassionate into our everyday experience and the experience of those who interact with us during that day.
One idea came to me through a book by Rabbi David Cooper. God is a Verb. The rabbi writes about Kabbalah, a mystic Jewish tradition and study. In this tradition, the rabbi finds the imperative for charity on a daily basis. One way he sought that goal was to keep a folded dollar always in his pocket, so when someone asked for spare change, he would give that person a dollar. Like many of us, I had avoided even really seeing such people in need, and when I felt I could do nothing else, I dug into my pockets and swiftly handed over some change still not really seeing. I took the rabbi's suggestion, and prepared a dollar to hand away. That seemed better, but I knew it lacked the full compassion I wanted. Charity often comes without really seeing the other and feeling compassion. In fact, I realized that I still didn't really see that other person. I realized that was how I often dealt with those who moved me in their distress. I just didn't see them, not really. My identity felt threatened because I couldn't do enough, and my ego defended my identity by not seeing, creating an inattention to the existence of those who caused such a feeling. I understood, finally, that those people I purposefully did not see, saw me and felt me not seeing them.
At fifteen, I left home and spent a little time homeless. I remembered not being seen. It hurt me. It must hurt those I did not see. If I wanted to choose compassion, I wanted to see these people in terms of the I/Thou. When someone asks me for money, I always have two dollars in my wallet ready to go (given inflation, it seems fair). Before the exchange, I look at the person directly and ask that person's name. I exchange names with her/him, and I offer my hand. I try to express my concern for their well being, and sometimes we talk for a little while. When we separate, I thank them for asking. Sometimes, one of the people I meet in this way will come up to me again and just chat, no exchange involved. I know that this exchange doesn't make much of a material difference to this person in need, but it seems the right thing in and of itself. It gives my unconditional feeling of compassion some tangible voice. If the other hears that voice and believes that we saw each other as fellow beings, it might hold some meaning for that person, answer some small need of theirs puny as the two dollars really is.