From Here to Eternity

by James Jones

“You see what that implies? If God is Instability rather than Fixity, if God is Growth and Evolution, then there is no need for the concept of forgiveness. The mere concept of forgiveness implies the doing of something wrong, Original Sin. But if evolution is growth by trial and error, how can errors be wrong? since they contribute to growth? Does a mother feel called upon to forgive her child for eating green apples or putting his hand on the stove? Did you ever truly love some body, or some thing? A woman; did you ever love a woman? If you ever really truly loved a thing, you never even considered forgiving it something, did you? Anything it did was all right with you, wasnt it? No matter how much it hurt you. You dont have to forgive something you love. You forgive the ones you dont love. “If you love someone,” Jack Malloy said, “you never even think of forgiving them. You may fight them like hell over something, and use every pressure to change them. But when the brawl is all over and you havent changed them one bit, you go right on accepting them. You’re never so smug, or so righteous, or so superior, to tell yourself—or tell them—you forgive them.”

Jack Malloy was able to love the human race because he expected ahead-of-time to be let down by his friends and hurt by his enemies and betrayed by his leaders. He saw these things as natural reactions to be anticipated, instead of perfidies to be decried.

“It seems like,” Prew said contortedly, “it seems like life is made up of saying hello to people we dont like and good-by to people we do.” “That’s horse shit,” Jack Malloy said. “Sentimental horse shit. Dont ever let me hear you say a thing like that again. You just happen to be going through a period of the good-bys. Every man has them to go through at different times. Now shut up with that crap. And lets hit the sack.”

Shame ain’t a spontaneous emotion; shame is an induced emotion. A man who knows his own mind dont know what shame is.”