Your main possession consists of your actions. No matter how bad someone else is going to be, you’ve got to have goodwill for them.

"Your main possession consists of your actions. And what’s going to keep them going well in bad circumstances? Strong goodwill [mettā]. Here in America we’d say, “industrial strength” goodwill, that no matter how bad someone else is going to be, you’ve got to have goodwill for them. Because your main concern is how skillfully you’re going to behave toward that other person. And it may happen that they pick up on the fact that you do really mean well for them. You see that they’re simply misguided.

As the Buddha said, when someone is doing something unskillful, you have to have compassion for them. If there are no redeeming characteristics in the other person at all, you have to have even more compassion, because they’re just digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And as for the damage they can do to you and people you love or the people you care for, the Buddha said that kind of damage is much less a concern than damage to your virtue and damage to your right views. Nobody can damage those except you yourself."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Goodwill as a Strength"

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