• The fact is, more often than not, violence is NEVER personal! You might get the slap on your face; or a blow to your stomach; threatened with getting fired from your job; getting a parking ticket from your neighborhood meter-maid, etc. But, even if all these violent acts are indeed registered, either on your face, stomach, your psyche, or your pocketbook -- still, all these violence, either, physical, psychological, generational, or economical -- are not personal. It is never personal.
• I know this statement is a little radical. So, let me try to illustrate this with two examples.
You had a very rough day in the office. Every single thing that could go wrong, went wrong. It is one of those rare days that nothing went right. On top of that, your assistant was promoted ahead of you, and to make matters worse, your boss threatened to fire you. So, you took the subway home with this feeling of great injustice gnawing at your gut. Although, you feel a very strong emotion brewing deep within you, you just can not release your pent-up anger, your inner violence on the old smelly homeless woman sitting next to you, even if you are irritated by her never ending stories – about how her husband left her and took all her savings some 40 odd years ago – with her saliva flying all over your face.
So you got home and are greeted happily by your ever-loving wife. You ask yourself, why is she so happy? Here I am so miserable and she is ecstatic. So, instead of seeing your wife as ever happy and loving that she is, you start to remember all the not-so-nice things she has done to you in the past and all the nice things she did not do for you. You begin to justify the anger and trashing you are about to give her. "Where's my dinner?" "You know how I hate broccoli." "And this chicken soup is cold!" "You're good for nothing!" "Go back to your mother's house!"
"Ah, dear... this IS my mother's house."
Try to remember the anger and violence you have inflicted on others. Now put them on a scale or chart. You will clearly see that the closer your relationship with a person, the greater the violence you have done to them.
It is not because they did you greater wrong, but rather because, they are there, conveniently there for you to express your accumulated frustrations on – conveniently there, close to you.
• Your accumulated frustrations, both recent and old, are also your internal violence, just waiting for an excuse to be expressed externally.
• Upon realizing this – that violence done to me is not personal, I have completely changed the way I look at violence forever. Now, I have comprehended that those loved ones that harmed me in the past did not really meant to do me harm. I also now understand that I really did not mean to harm those that I did wrong in the past. In this sense, I do not forgive, nor do I forget – I comprehend. Now, I am reconciled with my past, I am reconciled with myself.
"Then one has the theme of revenge immediately in front of us. If we speak of reconciliation it is necessary to speak of overcoming revenge." --Silo, Grotte, Italy, 06/05/2008, http://siloswords.blogspot.com/2009/03/silo-in-grotte.html•••
