The Difference Between A Good And Bad Person
A man once asked, in earnest quiet,
As winter pressed against the pane,
“What line divides the soul made righteous
From one that walks in silent stain?”
No thunder answered—only stillness,
The kind that listens more than speaks;
For truth is not in grand pronouncements,
But in the turning of the meek.
The good man is not born in brightness,
Nor crowned by some unerring light;
He stumbles, errs, and knows his darkness,
Yet labors still toward what is right.
He feels the weight of others’ sorrow,
As though it were his very own;
And in the bread he breaks for strangers,
A deeper kinship there is sown.
The bad man, too, is not a monster
Fashioned in some distant flame;
He simply turns his gaze from suffering
And calls indifference by another name.
He builds his peace on others’ ruin,
He silences the inward plea;
And every act of quiet cruelty
He cloaks in false necessity.
Yet mark this well—the line is shifting,
It does not bind one soul apart;
It passes through each living person,
A hidden seam within the heart.
For in the same breast dwell both impulses—
The will to cherish, and to sever;
And each small choice, unnoticed often,
Leans the soul forever.
So judge not harshly, nor too quickly,
For none are wholly lost or found;
The difference lives in daily mercy—
In how we lift, or press, another down.
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