By Dr. Marianne Furtado de Nazareth
As a child one tends to get pleasure in revenge, if someone has irritated you or demeaned you. School was a hot bed where revenge was plotted and gleefully carried out. As one grows older revenge is a tiresome and all consuming emotion, not worth the effort.
What is revenge according to the dictionary?
Revenge (n): the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands; the desire to inflict retribution.Revenge, reprisal, retribution, vengeance suggest a punishment, or injury inflicted in return for one received. Revenge is the carrying out of a bitter desire to injure another for a wrong done to oneself or to those who are felt to be like oneself: to plot revenge.The passion for revenge is strong and sometimes almost overwhelming. … Revenge is a primitive, destructive, and violent response to anger, injury, or humiliation. It is a misguided attempt to transform shame into pride.
Revenge is the much used premise of so many TV dramas and movie sagas, but should it play an important role in our real lives?
Having gone through a lot of revenge based nastiness in my life, I wanted to explore the dark, secretive and mysterious science and psychology of revenge. As much as we hate to admit it, revenge is one of those intense feelings that comes up in every single human being.
Have you ever been wronged and wished you could punish the perpetrator? This desire is wired within us. Revenge is a powerful internal force we must seek to understand.We often believe that exacting revenge is a form of emotional release and that getting retribution will help us feel better. Movies often portray the act of revenge as a way of gaining closure after a wrong. But in fact, revenge has the opposite effect.
Even though the first few moments feel rewarding in the brain, psychological scientists have found that instead of quenching hostility, revenge prolongs the unpleasantness of the original offense. Instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation. Revenge re-opens and aggravates your emotional wounds. Even though you might be tempted to punish a wrong, you end up punishing yourself because you cannot heal.
Putting this in the context of the bible St. Matthew 5:38–48 said:
My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors. Really? Easier said than done! Someone is harassing you and you are expected to pray for them and love them too?
Look at the last two antitheses mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount- they deal with love of enemies. We should not look at “an eye for an eye” to be able to settle a disagreement. It is actually meant to limit acts of revenge by making sure the punishment is not excessive but fits the crime.
However, Jesus asks his followers to take a different approach by resisting retaliation altogether. The response to a nasty person who slaps us on the cheek, takes us to court, or demands a service of us is not to resist. Similarly, for a weaker person, such as a beggar or borrower, we are asked to give them what they ask for. Those who are called to the Kingdom of Heaven are to go beyond the way the world usually works and thereby serve God’s kingdom here on earth.
The other difficult demand of those who are called to the kingdom is to embrace the enemy. There is no command in the Old Testament to hate individuals in a personal or vindictive way. But there is a religious stance that calls one to hate evil and to distance oneself from those who participate in evil. In contrast, Matthew emphasizes that love of God and love of neighbour are the fundamental commands on which all else depend. Because God’s love is unconditional, we are to strive to love as God does, though, of course, it is challenging.
Think about it –Is it even possible?
We can find the key in the final verse. We are to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. We are not to be perfect as in doing everything correctly, that is, as in being absolutely morally correct. We are to be perfect as in striving to reach the completeness we are called to in the Kingdom of Heaven. Attempting to love our enemies is part of striving for that completeness. Extremely hard especially when one has been wronged, over and over again.
But then I stumbled upon the thoughts of the golden voiced singer — Frank Sinatra. In his words:
“The best revenge is massive success.” –Frank Sinatra
The next time you feel the dark tendrils of revenge creeping into your soul, Just make a conscious decision to take that intensity and put it towards succeeding. Put it towards your goals. Put it towards hustling to get what you want. Put it towards growth. Get the reward center of your brain pumping by thinking about how sweet it will feel when you more than meet your goals. This shifts the focus onto you and your mission and makes your perpetrator irrelevant–which is exactly where they should be.
Then life can take on a more positive meaning and one rises above petty revenge, to achieve much more in our lives fuelled if you like — by revenge.
Dr Marianne Furtado de Nazareth,
Former Asst. Editor, The Deccan Herald, &
Adjunct faculty St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science, Bangalore.