It’s About Making Babies!

Annie on Smart at Love has a nice article on how revenge on your ex can be complex, complete, only should never be actually carried out.

On the one hand I see the ‘Silence is Golden’ effect, that you are not going to spend the rest of your life following along the ex’s path, warning all and sundry about his failings. Why would the first next-victim deserve a warning if the third next-victim won’t? Just disengaging and letting the ex go, to continue injuring and disrespecting people is the right thing? Of course, this also leaves open the chance that the ex might change in the future. But does your soul die a bit for failing to reduce someone else’s misery and personal crisis?

Since you aren’t the ex’s parent charged with responsibility for teaching social, personal, and spiritual values, anything you do will be an attack or assault and not likely to provoke growth. And besides, you won’t be around to reinforce the lesson or correct misapplications.

Actually, I think the revenge bit has an even darker side, even if only done in fantasy — you visualize yourself hurting someone. Whether or not you carry through with part or all of your fantasy, the effect of contemplating an attack on someone will change who you are, what your values are, and how you view others. Done often enough, such visualizations and imaginings will be as damaging to you as if you actually harmed someone intentionally. Catharsis, imaging and visualizing situations and events to recognize, examine, understand, and release feelings, may be a very potent tool for the psychiatric therapist, but I cannot think it is safe to do at home.

My advice comes from the above comment about what you are responsible for. Imagine if you will that each individual makes choices. Some choices are well though out, some goals are well though out, sometimes consequences are ignored and sometimes expected consequences influence choices. No one knows everything, so sometimes choices don’t take all available information into consideration. So if the ex chooses to cheat, lie, or leave, you can always choose to either adjust to that aspect of his/her character, or choose to let them pursue their choices without you. That is, his cheating is about his integrity and his choices, not about you — what is about you is whether you can afford to keep someone with these values in your intimate life. That isn’t an easy call — as Emma Thompson has it in ‘Love Actually’, ‘…would you stay, knowing things could always be worse, or leave?’

Revenge is great in literature and bad novels. Entertaining. The advice I like is ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ (George Herbert) By getting on with your life without the ex, you deny him or her your recognition and that gift that people give to family and loved ones — your regard, time spent in your company, closeness. Instead, learn, examine your relationship not to see where you went wrong, but to identify what you can do better for yourself and your next friend. Take the time to dream, to let injuries heal (without picking any scabs! lol!), and to make some peace in your life. Perhaps the next time you will be able to observe your new friend causes your inner peace to grow.

The difference between humor and joy, is that humor is abut pain, while joy is about growth and beauty. Revenge is also about pain, and is seldom a healthy choice. Even in your dreams.

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I recall a bit of common sense advice that floored me.  Why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned this before?

When your two year old is throwing a tantrum, you don’t yell at the kid.  Yelling increases the energy, joins in the kid’s tactics, and sets a new goal of loudness for the kid to achieve.  Instead a calm word or three will make the kid get quiet to hear your response. 

What got me thinking about this is the number of religion based conflicts in the Middle East, and here in America.  Just from my own experience at attending Christian churches on my own and when visiting friends, I can see a parallel.  See, I prefer a calmer approach, based on study.  Certain co-workers preferred a preacher with fire, with emphasis on acting according to their group’s teachings.  These friends are more inclined to intolerance of others.  They are militant about abortion, about gays, and about how their beliefs outweigh the rights of others.

I may be missing something.  But it seems to me that Syria and Iran believe strongly the Bible line ‘if you are not with me, you are against me’.  Thus Hezbollah is performing a service to their faith, in harassing Israel.  In the context of nations, of peoples, and of protection of family and friends, not to mention self-defense, Israel has no option but to oppose  the continued assaults coming out of Lebanon. And Israel is standing for her faith as well.

What does this mean in middle America?  When we choose a preacher for our congregation, should we go for the energetic delivery, the fire-and-brimstone fervor that draws donations and attendance?  The crowd pleaser that encourages behavior on the fringe of legal behavior in the mundane world?

I think ‘homo sapiens’ really translates to ’single thought’ or one-track minds.  We are hard-wired to addictive behaviors.  Most of us are best pleased with a fixed daily routine — note the success of corporations, armies, and schools that establish a fixed routine.  Note how prone we are toward fixed patterns of behavior with respect to food, sexual intercourse and fetishes, gambling, drugs and alcohol, hobbies, livelihood, and other individual or crowd-based behaviors — such as religious fervor.  Perhaps the greatest achievements of the human race are the individuals that resist habitual behaviors, and the masses that make communal efforts their habit.

So choose.  Next time you attend religious services, contemplate whether the speaker is encouraging communal behavior or individual freedom.  And whether the emphasis is on growing and maturing, or on shouting at (warring on) enemies.

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