Noah benShea's book The Word: Jewish Wisdom Through Time tells a Yiddish folktale that shows how where we came from and to whom we may want to go affect our predisposition:
An old man sat outside the walls of a great city. When travelers approached they would ask the old man: "What kind of people live in this city?" And the old man would answer: "What kind of people lived in the place where you came from?" If the travelers answered: "Only bad people lived in the place where we came from." Then the old man would reply: "Continue on, you will find only bad people here." But if the travelers answered: "Only good people lived in the place where we have come from." Then the old man would say: "Enter, for here, too, you will find only good people."
This story, in order to make its point of the powerful influence of past experiences on the present, polarizes "good" and "bad" as distinct entities. In reality, such a distinction rarely exists.
There are no such things as good people or bad people. There is only goodness and badness delivered by individuals. Some people do more good than bad, and some more bad than good. "Badness" and "goodness" define human beings and are often opposite sides of the same coin. As the wisdom of Lao Tzu says, "If goodness is taken as goodness, wickedness enters as well," to achieve that which characterizes much of the world. To cultivate the good and eliminate the bad is as unlikely as to have an electric current without both positive and negative poles. It is better to accept the principle of polarity-plus-minus, north-south, sky-earth, passion-reason (and indeed all pairs of opposites), because they are really different aspects of one and the same system. These two alternative forces, or phases, in the rhythm of everything in the Universe have been portrayed as Ying and Yang. The disappearance of either of them would mean the disappearance of the whole.
Things are never black and white, or black or white; they are black-white. In Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (Way of Life), under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness; there is good only because there is evil. How often are we surprised to find out that a person who is known to us as a good individual did something horrifying. Is it our poor judgment, or lack of intuition or knowledge, or was he so deceptive and duplicitous? None of these. He was always himself, a good person, who did a bad thing, or what we personally or collectively called a bad thing. Is divorcing a spouse after fifteen years of marriage a bad thing, or an honest thing though belatedly executed? Are donations tax-related incentives or genuine charities? Are missionaries saints, or are their activities serving primarily to define themselves? Independent of the possibly mixed motives of individuals, donations and missionary services are useful contributions to the community. There are good things whether they were executed by good people or not-so-good people, or bad people or not-so-bad people, or good-bad people, or just people. It depends what you are looking for.
Marianne Williamson relates a memorable anecdote about the great Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci that reveals the invisible connections between these dualities:
Early in his career, he was painting a picture of Christ, and found a profoundly beautiful young male to model for his portrait of Jesus. Many years later he walked through the streets of Florence looking for the perfect person to portray the great betrayer. Finally he found someone dark-looking enough to do the job. He went up to the man to approach him to do the modeling. The man looked at him and said. "You don't remember me, but I know you. Years ago, I was the model for your picture of Jesus."
Adapted from The Art of Serenity
