revenge: turn a negative into a positive

“I told her we were both suffering because of him, and if she wants real revenge, the best thing she can do is be happy in a relationship with somebody else.” (p.359)

In a comment conversation about forgiving, Wildcherries talks about having sought out revenge in the heat of the moment, by doing something to hurt the person who had hurt her: almost immediately, she started to feel guilty, rather than feeling any sense of relief.

I think it’s very natural to have an urge to retaliate when someone does wrong to us; it’s our animal insticts that want to protect us from harm. But as human beings, we are much more capable of hurting one another with words and actions than animals are, and fighting back with physical strength and/or words does not protect our hearts. As Wildcherries says, it’s probably much more satisfying to imagine all the ways we could get back at someone if we were that type of person, and not doing something we may later regret makes us bigger and stronger in the end.

The guilt we feel after retaliating is just as natural as the urge to do it in the first place, because we are taught values from an early age, and revenge has nothing but negative connotations: to inflict punishment for injury or insult; to seek or take vengeance for; spite or vindictiveness; payback – not a healthy set of words (and if you read my definition of forgiving, you’ll see that revenge is its antithesis).

There is, however, a small positive that can be taken out of one of revenge’s synonyms: retribution is not only defined as being punished (or punishing someone) for something, but it can also mean receiving a reward in recompense.

This is what I’m talking about when I say that I’ve taken the negatives and unfortunates in my life, and instead of building up spite and bitterness, I try to learn from the situations. The reward for going through something difficult comes when we let go of it as a negative experience, and see it as part of our personal growth and evolution in life. That positive energy, combined with better awareness, will hopefully leave us open to receive better circumstances the next time around.

If we look at the quote from my novel that starts this post, we can all probably think of someone who started seeing someone they weren’t interested in, just to hurt an ex they still had feelings for, hoping to get a reaction, or even win them back. But the chances of a relationship built on this pretense bringing any happiness to someone is slim, and by toying with somebody else, we are compounding our problems instead of dealing with them.

But if we take that same quote, and we think of someone who got over the pain of a relationship that didn’t work out, who stopped looking to hurt someone else, and put that effort into making themself happy again, we can look up to this person as a source of inspiration and strength, imagine ourselves wanting to be (or be with) them, and undertand that the faster we focus on the positives of our experiences, the faster we are likely to find more of them.