5:00PM
I wonder what society would look like if it had more reconciliation and less retribution? More healing and less vengeance?
If I feel hurt by something and I think the other person is feeling good, there are two main strategies I can employ to change that: 1) I can make the other person hurt, so that we both feel hurt or 2) I can heal my hurt, so that we both feel good.
I think the first strategy is the foundation for many societies, especially the American society. If someone hurts me, I hurt them back, and we’re “even.” I believe the justice system that we have is strongly based in this act of retribution—an updated version of Hammurabi’s code, an eye for an eye, etc. If I commit a crime (hurting someone physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), then I will be punished (hurt) to teach me not to do it again.
I think this not only applies to our justice system but our social system as well. More and more, we are growing into a “cancel culture,” where people are being blacklisted for what they’ve done in the present or the past. If someone says something online that hurts a lot of people, that person is shunned and banned, again, causing punishment (hurt) to that person for their actions.
I wonder what it would look like if we had more reconciliation—if instead of punching back, we healed in. What if we realized that if we resolve our own pain, we can again join them in pleasure? More often than not, I believe the other person caused us pain because they were feeling pain and were seeing it as some act of retribution to even the score. What if we could break that train by healing ourselves?
I believe this is a more effective strategy. I remember reading about people who have forgiven people for murdering their relatives, and when asked why, they say, “What will putting him in prison for the rest of his life do? It won’t bring back my baby.”
I wonder how much more free we would feel if we could communicate publicly without fearing that we would say or do one wrong thing and be punished harshly for it? I wonder how much more healthy we would feel if we focused on healing ourselves more than focused on punishing the other?
I believe we all make mistakes—some by accident and some intentional. I believe that even many of our “intentional” actions that hurt others are coming from a long and complex history of us feeling hurt and not processing it. I hope that as we move forward, we start to see the efficiency in healing ourselves first. While it may not heal the other person, punching them rarely heals us in the long term.
5:10PM
