In my life I have been in several fist fights, with the last being some 18 years ago in a nightclub. I know two things about fighting: I can hold my own and I can take a hit. I have tested it.
I have never started a fight, never thrown the first punch, never aimed to cause an injury to another person. I am not a very big man but, I am strong, and the few fights I have been a part of, I was aware enough not to cause serious harm.
This is also a lie, for I have started many fights with the intention of causing harm and I am surprisingly quick and can strike through defenses and knock the wind out of a person. Sometimes it has been a friend or family member, sometimes my wife. At times, I may have looked to maim, maybe even kill.
Is saying sorry for the hurt enough?
Spoken too soon
I am a pacifist. Yet, I have injured so many people. At times, I have gone out of my way to harm and often, it is those close to me upon which I have inflicted the most pain. Although slowly learning not to be, I am occasionally very violent. Perhaps it is by nature, a genetic anomaly.
You have likely realized by this point, that what I speak of is not physical violence but emotional and psychological. The attack has not come through my fists but through my words. Is it any better or, is it worse?
I have been punched hard in the face, my lips split and blood filled my mouth. I do not remember the pain, I cannot even remember the face of the person that hit me, and I hit back. It is like the memory has faded, the pain quickly subsided, the scars healed in time. Physical pain is low level, easily explained and accepted for what it is.
Emotional and Psychological pain if unattended can survive a lifetime, fester and infect the entire body. These pains may scar over, but, may never be forgettable and persistently push thoughts, words and actions.
Violence passed
Causing this kind of pain on purpose may be the most violent act of all. Doing it to those we care about and care about us, the cruelest. Yet, we all do it though. At least everyone I have met. Admitting to it is another story of course.
My father is one of the most peaceful people you could have met although when he was younger, he had a bad temper by his own admission. What changed in him to quell the anger and replace is it with generosity of his time and resources? I do not know. With his mind rarely lucid, I may never know.
Perhaps it was having children that made him evaluate his actions and consider his approach. Children seem to have a self-reflecting mirror effect on many people. Perhaps it is because every action, every word form a child is born from innocence and for most, protecting that innocence becomes paramount to a parent. My father was angry at me rarely, however when he was, he was never cruel.
For the win
But, as children grow into adults, we remove the soft gloves, the handle with care position. We enter into discussion and argument as combatants, not allies searching for a common good. It is a competition, and success means to win, often at any cost.
But, what do we win? Where is our victory? We have not vanquished the enemy, we have wounded a partner in conversation. If anything, we are more likely to have made an enemy out of a potential ally. When it comes to this kind of harm, intention is important. If one intends to do harm verbally it is a violent act. Unintentionally however, an accident.
But, not all lies in the attacker, for verbally need not ever cause an injury. But to live that way is difficult without understanding the self deeply. To recognize the pain and objectify it. Take interest in it and rather than being offended, remove the possibility of ever taking offence. Easier said than done, I know but to achieve it is empowering.
No topic need be avoided out of discomfort and all words can be considered to understand and find their value, or discarded. To be able to hear all, consider all and objectively evaluate all is a great advantage in finding out who one really is.
Lessons within
The thing with the psychological and emotional wounds that may tear us apart is, they need not be permanent fixtures of how we act. They need not be the baggage that travels with us from place to place, from one relationship to the next to sour the water of a fresh well. Too often, they do though.
These wounds are easy to spot and relatively easy to begin to repair. To spot one, all that needs to happen is a little attention needs to get paid to when that feeling of offence rises within. The 'I don't care what others think' statement falls down if offence ever rises within as it is extremely difficult to offend oneself.
Beginning the healing is the objectification of it and this process requires nothing external to get involved, just a mind willing to work it out. With time, it may even be possible to not have to even work it out by just realizing the insignificance and self-defeating nature of it and, letting it go.
Taking offence is self-defeating. It is cutting off the nose to spite the face and the only one it restricts is the offended. It restricts by manipulating behavior and it becomes a button that another can press. A trigger to manipulate behavior.
Social-unawareness
But, we are living increasingly in a world where this self-reflection is not taking place at both ends. Those that are intending to do harm do not see the harm it brings themselves and those that get offended are increasingly trying to limit the words of others so they do not need to deal with their own wounds. It is a lack of self-awareness for both and both positions do unnecessary harm to others. Unnecessary harm, sounds rather sociopathic I think.
Restricting the speech of others because one is hurt by what they say is not a road anyone should desire for it may soon be their turn to be restricted. Targeting to do intentional harm through speech suffers the same fate as one day, someone may cut so deep with their words there is no coming back.
Gently forward
We can never really know what will and won't offend someone beforehand but when we do and still choose to go forward and do harm, responsibility must be taken. Personally, I struggle with this and even though I am learning quite quickly to not take offence, sometimes that position blinds me from considering that others may not be in the same position.
I have been looking into this more deeply within myself lately and trying course correction as I understand that in the long-run, this action does not lead to my best self even though in the short-term, it may reward. What I have also found is that the ones that dish it out heavily and hide behind their 'rights to free speech', are often the same that are shattered when attacked and then hide behind their 'rights to not be offended'.
For what we say and what we restrict, there are consequences. What my goal is for myself is to become compassionate enough to not cause intentional harm, and strong enough to absorb the attacks that will inevitably come. I figure that at some point, my father realized the same thing for whatever reason, and changed his behavior. Perhaps my daughter can realize it earlier than me.
None of us are set in stone, the responsibility is ours and ours alone to be our best. The people that benefit from our best are all around us.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
