I really liked two lines about revenge on the episode of The Secret Life of Us I watched today.
I won't be able to find the first without going through some tedious Hulu navigations. So I'll just paraphrase. It was about revenge against people you love. Maybe it was along the lines of it being like a knife that cuts yourself.
The other one was at the end of the episode. It's easy for me to get to, so I'll quote it directly.
You never get what you want from revenge. Any satisfaction is tainted by the damage you've done to their soul and yours.
I don't think I've done anything big and obvious like spray someone's belongings with fish sauce or slash their tires. But sometimes I'll try to treat people the way they treat me instead of how I want to be treated.
I did it recently to a friend. Her emails and are conversations are so often focused on her. Our interactions make me feel like I'm her personal counselor or life coach. She rarely asks me anything about my life, and frankly doesn't seem to care. I ask her questions. I cheer her on. I give her sympathy. So one day she sends me an email telling me details about her life. Instead of being my usual supportive self, I wrote nothing in response to what she said. I just wrote about what was going on in my life.
I don't know if it annoyed her or hurt her. She didn't act hurt or annoyed. Maybe she actually prefers email conversations where each person talks about only themselves. But the thing is...I don't like these type of interactions. I didn't like the person I was in that email. And what if I continued to write to her in that way? What if we both wrote emails that are always completely self-absorbed? Well, what if I get accustomed to acting that way and this negative behavior carries over to my interaction with other people?
I still wish certain people in my life would be less self-absorbed. But why should I sink to their level to teach them a lesson? In the end, it's better to hope karma takes care of it.
You know....I've probably been an instrument of karma for many people...not by purposely behaving badly, but by just being myself. For example. Someone might annoy their friend by writing these really long blog posts. They could purposely write a really long blog post themselves to try to annoy their friend. But if they're naturally good at writing nice short blog posts, why change that? It's better if the long-blog-post-writer runs into my blog.
I won't be able to find the first without going through some tedious Hulu navigations. So I'll just paraphrase. It was about revenge against people you love. Maybe it was along the lines of it being like a knife that cuts yourself.
The other one was at the end of the episode. It's easy for me to get to, so I'll quote it directly.
You never get what you want from revenge. Any satisfaction is tainted by the damage you've done to their soul and yours.
I don't think I've done anything big and obvious like spray someone's belongings with fish sauce or slash their tires. But sometimes I'll try to treat people the way they treat me instead of how I want to be treated.
I did it recently to a friend. Her emails and are conversations are so often focused on her. Our interactions make me feel like I'm her personal counselor or life coach. She rarely asks me anything about my life, and frankly doesn't seem to care. I ask her questions. I cheer her on. I give her sympathy. So one day she sends me an email telling me details about her life. Instead of being my usual supportive self, I wrote nothing in response to what she said. I just wrote about what was going on in my life.
I don't know if it annoyed her or hurt her. She didn't act hurt or annoyed. Maybe she actually prefers email conversations where each person talks about only themselves. But the thing is...I don't like these type of interactions. I didn't like the person I was in that email. And what if I continued to write to her in that way? What if we both wrote emails that are always completely self-absorbed? Well, what if I get accustomed to acting that way and this negative behavior carries over to my interaction with other people?
I still wish certain people in my life would be less self-absorbed. But why should I sink to their level to teach them a lesson? In the end, it's better to hope karma takes care of it.
You know....I've probably been an instrument of karma for many people...not by purposely behaving badly, but by just being myself. For example. Someone might annoy their friend by writing these really long blog posts. They could purposely write a really long blog post themselves to try to annoy their friend. But if they're naturally good at writing nice short blog posts, why change that? It's better if the long-blog-post-writer runs into my blog.