We are all hypocrites to some degree — passionately promoting ideas we have not ourselves fully lived, taking others to task for frailties and failures not that dissimilar from our own.

Knowing this, we should all be more gentle, more hopeful, more merciful with one another. Self-righteousness is truly the ‘privilege’ that makes poor, the impoverishing ‘luxury’ of those whose secrets are simply not as well known.

Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy, indeed.