Into Extinction Day 103 (Vengeance is best served cold…)

I was thinking over the weekend about the right thing.  I have been faced with several incidents over the past several weeks and what choices to make.   A part of me always wants to be vindictive, spiteful, malicious, bitter, mean, cruel, hurtful, nasty, and malevolent.  It’s an opportunity to give some where I took some.  The outcome of not doing this you get to be the better person, there are no awards, precious little recognition and nothing really for you except you know you did what had to be done.

 

In our world and in popular culture, most movies, friends, and governments make a big thing out of taking back what is yours.  Movies such as Payback is entire film out of getting back what was done to and more.  The first wives club –

“Three ex-wives, dumped for newer models, determine to get their revenge. They had helped their husbands become financially successful, so they cleverly plan to hurt their exes in their pockets. Justice is sweet and fun with plenty of great on-liners and physical gags”

Is a lengthy exposition on how to gut your ex-husband – forgiveness doesn’t seem to be apart of this.  War of the Roses –

The Roses, Barbara and Oliver, live happily as a married couple. Then she starts to wonder what life would be like without Oliver, and likes what she sees. Both want to stay in the house, and so they begin a campaign to force each other to leave. In the middle of the fighting is D’Amato, the divorce lawyer. He gets to see how far both will go to get rid of the other, and boy do they go far.

Is one of the most brutal and damaging movies I have seen on the subject of divorce – a black comedy.  I have seen it once and plan to never see it again.

 

The point of this is revenge.

Revenge (also vengeance, retribution, or vendetta amongst others) consists primarily of retaliation against a person or group in response to a perceived wrongdoing. Although many aspects of revenge resemble or echo the concept of justice, revenge usually has a more injurious than harmonious goal. The goal of revenge usually consists of forcing the perceived wrongdoer to suffer the same pain that was originally inflicted.

 

The point being is get back some of your own. 

In some societies, it is believed that the punishment in revenge should be more than the original injury, as a punitive measure. The Old Testament philosophy of “an eye for an eye” (cf. Exodus 21:24) tried to moderate the allowed damage, in order to avoid a vendetta or series of violent acts that could spiral out of control—instead of ‘tenfold’ vengeance, there would be a simple ‘equality of suffering’. Detractors argue that revenge is a simple logical fallacy, of the same design as “two wrongs make a right.” Some Christians interpret Paul’s “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19, King James Version) to mean that only God has the moral right to exact revenge. Indeed, every major religious system contains some method for the mediation of disputes and for the limitation of vengeance by imputing a sense of cosmic justice to replace the often faulty justice systems of the world of men.

 

I am not a bible thumper just thought the quote was interesting.  In my experience although revenge is sweet by the very nature of enacting it propagates more and more of the same.  The point being is to get past whatever was done to you and move on with your life.  This is an extraordinary difficult task to accomplish – I know.

 

“Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: “The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions…—starts from the notion that a human life…is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another’s act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act—a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts”.

 

My mother was in town this past weekend.  She came in town because her brother was dying.  I don’t keep close with my family nor do they have a current phone number for me.  After years of child abuse at their hands I need some distance. 

 

However, when my grandmother died her greatest wish for me was to help my family and I respect that wish.  So my older brother contacted me and told me my mother was arriving.  I called her and asked her if she needed anything and she just wanted to see me.

 

As usual it was a dog-fuck from the start.  I called her Saturday morning to discover the hotel wanted her out because she didn’t have a credit card.  *sigh  I went over and straightened that out.  Then I discovered like always she had no money for food.  I gave her money as well.

 

This was the woman that beat me as a child and stripped away my sense of self over the years.  I remember every morning in the summer we would dread her getting up.  As she stomped down the stairs we would all scurry about cleaning up the house.  This didn’t stop the verbal abuse from her as she called us useless and dumb-fucks.

 

One distinct memory was when I was in Grade 9 about 15 years old.  We were shopping for my winter clothing.  She slammed my new coat into the cart and announced to me that was the last fucking jacket she was going to buy me.   True to her word she never bought me clothes again.

 

Over the years I was told by my mom, that you little fucker wouldn’t amount to anything.  I remember her screaming that into my face one day and it followed with a smack to my face. 

 

So I did amount to something and managed to create almost the same atmosphere within my failed marriage.  But in the end, we are supposed to rise above this.  To be better than you were taught.   I gave that money to my mother for a few reasons:

1.     My dad got up every morning at 6am and went to work for 30 years – I owned him and it was the right thing to do.

2.     It was what my grandmother wanted me to do.  I didn’t understand her dying request 5 years ago but I know now.

3.     I suppose despite my best efforts I might be the better person and no this wasn’t something I was striving to do or I am proud of – it just is.  I don’t want any thank you’s or hugs for what I did.

 

There was one single incident that struck me about the past weekend.  As I was leaving my mother at the hospital – my duty done she came outside to say goodbye to me.  For a moment I thought it was just goodbye but she broke down and cried on my shoulder for 10 minutes.  It all the time I had know here I never saw this.  It struck me that although at the time, I didn’t need her perhaps she needed me – I had forgotten this with everything else going on.