Don't even the score by cheating

Here's the trap the third or fourth day after a wrong, once the shock has cooled into resentment. You start telling yourself a quiet story: they cut corners, so why shouldn't I? They took credit they didn't earn, so I'm owed one back. The wrong becomes a license. Padding the timesheet, slow-walking the work, skimming a little off the top of your effort — it doesn't feel like cheating anymore. It feels like collecting a debt.

Cicero, writing the West's first manual on duty, refused that math. Wealth and advantage are fine, he says, "provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided" (De Officiis 1.25, Miller). Always — not "unless someone wronged you first." The other person's injustice doesn't move the line of what's right; it just tempts you to step over it while feeling justified.

This is the heart of the week. The wrong tries to make a second wrongdoer, and it usually recruits through a sense of fairness, not malice. You think you're balancing the books. You're only adding your name to the ledger.