doing the best we can?

a long, long time ago, c asked me a question and posted it on her blog here. for days, i almost commented on her post but not quite. i thought about it on and off often enough, but it largely remained as much of a question as it was to begin with. at one point, i decided that we did try to do the best we could. and indeed, that was the best i could do :).

today, i am glad that i'd let the question brew peacefully within all this while. the answer (well, the best i can do for the present) lies in the core of these enlightening words by byron katie. admittedly, these are things i have thought about for months. but admittedly, i needed more to get to my answer. these were it:

Sin, too, is a concept. Think of the worst thing you ever did. Go into it as deeply as you can, from the perspective of the person you were at the time. With the limited understanding you had then, weren't you doing the best you could? How could you have done it any differently, believing what you believed? If you really enter this exercise, you'll see that nothing else is possible. The possibility that anything else could have happened is just a thought you have now about a then, an imagined past that you are comparing with the real past, which is also imagined. We're all doing the best we can. And if you feel that you've hurt someone, make amends, and thank the experience for showing you how not to live. No one would ever hurt another human being if he or she weren't confused. Confusion is the only suffering on this planet.