On REVENGE
Revenge has been an all-consuming phenomenon since the beginning of time. My favorite telling of revenge is the Count of Monte Cristo, an incredible novel by Alexander Dumas. The man is betrayed by the envy of his best friend, imprisoned and robbed of his wife, future, and child. He escapes imprisonment, obtains incredible wealth, becomes a prominent figure in France, and methodically takes revenge. It’s a nice story. However, such as in the the storyline of The Last of Us, Part 2, revenge consumes Ellie to the infinite degree, leaving a wake of countless dead and destroyed… all for the attempted achievement of killing one person. In the end, she is so destroyed and distraught from the journey, she doesn’t even kill that person. One tale of revenge ends well, while the other ends poorly. This is important.
If you really think about it, revenge is a very infantile concept. The child loses his toy to another child, and he feels he must then hurt the other child or steal it back. But what of the child who then accepts the toy has been taken, and pursues the presence of others toys, and other kids? To obsess over the need to “hurt someone back” is weak. To avenge one’s self sevenfold is to barely do anything truly. The best revenge is to remove yourself from the equation, to obstruct that vulnerability so it does not occur again. If someone wrongs you in a serious way, you should stop associating with that person as much as you can. However, allowing that person’s actions to consume your daily energy is allowing them to hurt you again and again everyday. I’m not going to say that true revenge is moving on and being better, because that’s really just moving on and being better. True revenge is screwing them over times seven. And to pursue that is to pursue a negativity that can give rise to absolute cancer. Every day that you choose revenge, you do not choose yourself. You choose a feeling that could take absolute years to pay off. All it takes is a momentary decision to not pursue vengeance, and you may unknowingly win back years of your life that have yet to unfold. You may gain back sleep, health, wealth, and general fortitude.
Those who hurts others do not understand when someone does not try to hurt them back. That person’s psyche will register that you have a level of self-control and self-respect that they will not ever truly have until they change entirely. Those people count on your reaction, as it is fulfillment of the pain contract they have formed with you. If you choose not to co-sign that contract, however, it doesn’t mean the pain immediately goes away. It does mean, however, that your energy is diverted back to you, and becoming who you want to become. You’ll quickly forget about that other person, yet they’ll live with the embarrassment of how they treated you forever. People know right from wrong, yet choose impulses that over ride that. They know when they’ve been a jerk, and you not being a jerk back is killer to their ego. They will be worried they did not affect you enough, and that is their burden to carry. You do not need to hurt them back, because being them every day is never enough.
I pursued revenge for years when a crime was committed against my very soul. Several, actually. I spent years being haunted by the way this person wronged me, and it kept me broken for just as long. That time felt like a blur, and it still does. In the end, I did end up “winning” as that person didn’t seem to realize we were in a perpetual race to be the highest achiever. I ran circles around that person, and it was pretty satisfying when it happened. Yet at the same time, I had lost precious moments of being present in my daughter’s life mentally while plotting my next come-up. And when the lack of progress on the other person’s end occurred, it only frustrated me more because they did so little. They didn’t even try, while I tried a lot. In the end, the work I did was totally worth it, as it was beneficial self-improvement. But I could have 10x’d the results if I had done it for me, instead of the “satisfaction” of saying f*ck you.
The conclusion is that revenge is a choice. You either choose the vendetta, which could cost you everything (it has cost many people everything), or you could choose justice. And justice is not “hurting someone back.” What’s the purpose of even doing that? Making them feel how you felt? As adults, we must evolve to reach for something better. You will fulfill the terms of every pain-contract all at once if you just continue to give justice to yourself in fulfilling your potential. The health, the mindset, the wealth, and the clarity of direction. To allow others to consume our direction is to give them our blood. Reclaim your life and move on.
