Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

The essay argues that being too principled, meaning insisting on settling every wrong through grudges, demands or revenge, can block flourishing, and that the most effective people stay principled in their own actions while staying flexible about other people and situations they cannot control. It compares this to basketball, where the saying "ball don't lie" implies that unfair calls even out over time, but the author says cosmic debts usually don't settle. It concludes that keeping score makes people resentful, and that people who avoided everyone who had treated them unfairly would end up alone.