Althea

This is a song ostensibly about a wise mystical woman our anxious narrator visits for advice, but it can also be seen as a tale of self-reflection. The song does, after all, have several allusions to Hamlet, source of Polonius's famous advice to be true to oneself. And to note the impossibility of talking to others without also talking to oneself is a close kin to the counsel in Matthew Chapter 7 that the speck in someone else's eye may be a log in your own. Psychologists have described "projection" as a defense mechanism in which unpleasant or unacceptable impulses, qualities, or behaviors are attributed to others in order to evade responsibility or justify prejudice. But so long as your focus is a critique of others, it's real easy to miss seeing the assumptions you hold that would bring you more peace were you to release them. Life in general can be a challenge in identifying what is the treachery of others, against which boundaries are important, and what is actually one's own doing or responsibility. And that's sometimes not easy to discern. Which is to say, as Althea advises, it's generally a good idea to quell the fire you might inflict on others. For one, it may be sympathy, not vengeance, you seek after all the smoke clears. For another, as fans of Rene Girard will know, the urge to scapegoat may feel satisfying but it also collapses love, leaving us all with less and less.