I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend who was very upset by how someone we know was treating him. He was frustrated as no matter what he did he could not get the person in question to keep to any arrangement.
If they sat down and discussed something wrote it down, confirmed it repeatedly there would still be no chance of an agreement holding.
He asked me, “Why can’t he just stick to what he says?”
In that moment I paused and took some time to actually contemplate the question.
Upon reflection I realised that there were many factors involved in this problem. I realised that the person in question had some very different ways of functioning in the world than myself. They lived very much in the moment and often would say what would bring the best results in the moment; they had a poor memory for things; they were not very well; they were very much moved by the ideas of the society they were brought up in and by the approval of others, both of which were often not inline with their true goals. Furthermore, they didn’t trust people and, ironically, their unpredictable behaviour caused instability that reinforced this belief.
In summary, they had such great inner conflict and incongruence that it was almost impossible for them to have integrity.
This I thought highlighted something that often we might forget. Virtues are often multilayered and with the best will in the world some people don’t have the ability or inner mastery to do what for some of us seems simple. Even if they are willing they might not to be able to reach standards.
Perhaps the take away from this, apart from having a realistic expectation and compassionate assessment of others, is that in our personal development we should be skillful builders. Work on the basics before building up to greater things.
For a deeper analysis of this see the Golden Book of Wisdom by Franz Bardon