Today we ask that you have mercy on people.

Often, one feels like one is at the mercy of other people.  Bosses, authority figures, parents, spouses, exes, politicians, the IRS, the government, big corporations, and so on.

In truth, it is the other way around.  They are at your mercy.

It is difficult to explain this, and yet it is true.  Whomever you feel oppressed by — know now, they are at your mercy.

So it was, for example, in the antebellum South in America.  The white Southerners were terrified of the slaves.  Their lives and livelihoods were, in a very real sense, at the mercy of the slaves.

This is always true.  All oppressors are at the mercy of the ones they oppress.

And so, we ask you now: have mercy on them.  Have compassion for them.  They are deeply unconscious — far more so than you are, reading this now.  They do not know what they do.  Have mercy on them.

Truly, all the people in your life whom you feel oppressed by — they are at your mercy.  This is always true.  So have mercy on them, for you are more awake than they.