You wake up. It's a wonderful day off. You have slept in to your time of preference You roll out of bed and the weather is beautiful. Padding to the kitchen, you pour yourself a bowl of your favorite sugar-coated, childhood-memory-inducing cereal. There is just enough milk left in the fridge for one giant bowl. On the way to the living room to catch your favorite late morning reruns, you stub your toe.
The several things happen simultaneously. You spill your cereal and the last of your milk. Not only do you spill it, but the spill lands on the carpet, the upholstery of the couch, AND your pajamas. Your phone also starts ringing from a number that you don't know, but you suspect may be an employer calling to schedule an interview you have been dying to get. You miss the call. They don't leave a voicemail. You need to get milk out of everything before it sours.
And your toe hurts bad enough to merit a growling recitation of any and every swear word you know.
If you are me (on certain days, at least), you spend at least the hour or two being mad enough at yourself and your stupid toe that you become perpetually biting and rude to any and everyone who dares to impede on your wallowing.
Sometimes it feels like one stubbed toe ruins an entirely beautiful day.
Now this chain of events has never actually happened to me. Or at least not all at once.
Days like this have happened though. Sometimes even consecutively. There has been more than once in this life where I react irrationally and treat others far worse than they deserve to be treated because I have been having a toe-stubbed, cereal-spilled kind of day.
Lately, I have started asking myself why.
Why do we yell at people from behind our steering wheels when we are late for something? Why do we push back when someone pushes us? Why do we pinch kids who call us names in grade school?
What is it about these situations that incite aggressive reactions?
Think about it.
Maybe you came to the same conclusion I did at first - it's human nature. But what about human nature could possibly lead to that? Not everyone reacts that way - so is it truly human nature?
Think some more...
And here's where I ended up. I believe this desire to cause pain in others when we feel pain is actually a way of seeking sympathy and understanding. When we reach out in a state of pain, be it physical or psychological, and try to incite feelings of pain in others, it is actually our way of wanting someone to understand.
Think about that for a second. Often, this reaction is so subconscious that when you read the statements above, you may have gotten defensive. "I don't try to incite pain in others - I am better than that. I love and value people. I would never TRY to hurt some." I'm not suggesting that everyone is malicious, rage-filled, or revenge addicts. Not at all. What I am suggesting is that when we have bad days, our impatience and frustration with others is actually a manifestation of our need to be understood. But instead of reaching out to gain sympathy and understanding, we use our actions as stimuli to create in others the frustration, pain,and/or anger we feel.
It makes much more sense to me that we do what we do to make people understand us. Whether those actions are good or bad.
Lately, with the insane amount and frequency of escalating violent crime in our country, I have heard much talk about reciprocity. The conversations that I have heard it included in essentially equate it to "an eye for an eye" sort of philosophy. If someone hits me, they deserve to be hit. If someone kills, they deserve to be killed. As the death penalty and police brutality become more in focus issues in social lenses, this is a philosophy that continues to be debated.
Before I touch on my personal perspective, here is something we need to understand first.
That is, in fact, NOT reciprocity.
Rec-i-proc-i-ty: (noun) the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit.
Reciprocity, as a social principle, is the rewarding of a positive action with another positive action. Seeking negative reciprocity is more often known as retaliatory action. When we hurt others or seek to cause pain because we have been hurt, we are retaliating. We are trying to return our pain.
Because we are so desperate for understanding. And that is human nature.
As for me, I believe in love. It all goes back to being barefoot. When we are being retaliatory, we are not being vulnerable. We are being defensive, fighting others to remind ourselves that we can cause pain and not just feel it. I have been there. Just ask my parents. My brother. Anyone who knew my all through middle and high school. I was very, very into retaliation. I didn't always know it, and I certainly did not (always) seek it intentionally... but the goal was there. I felt alone, hurt, trampled on - and I sought to make others feel the same. I picked words with punch. I found ways to remind people that I was not worth caring about since that was the message I felt was so specially constructed for me.
And then I changed. Perhaps I will go more into depth one day. But there was a summer where I realized that I was wasting my energy being mad and hurt. Sure, I had a right to those feelings. But why was I acting like a toddler? When children get hit, sometimes they cry. Often, they hit back. They don't have words or social constructs put in their head to help them express the pain and fear they are experiencing. What do they do? They seek to make someone else feel the pain they feel - it is a way of ensuring they don't have to experience it alone. And, if you have ever been around a toddler in this situation, hopefully you have heard an adult say "Let's try to use our words."
This analogy is so vivid for me because I just spent a year and a half being a nanny for three small boys. This conversation, for a solid three months, was almost a 3x/day routine. But it is worth saying every time because it is so important.
An eye for an eye doesn't fix anything. When we make people hurt to understand our pain, it doesn't fix our pain because it isolates the people we are ultimately trying to gain understanding from. Instead we are acting as conductors of electricity - we are passing on a charge that has to go somewhere. it funnels through chain reactions, leaving some form of pain and destruction in its path.
I can't agree with retaliatory action. Not on principle, and especially not on faith. I think that is where a large part of my struggle comes in. I watch dozens of people in my life, some Christians, some not, who constantly advocate for pain. They advocate for isolating consequences as a result of negative behavior, many times through government action. And I question it. As do many non-Christians.
Because where is the love in retaliatory action? Where is the forgiveness and the vulnerability? Where is the willingness to sit in the pain of sin long enough for healing to begin if we are just passing on anger and hatred because we somehow believe that we are better than others? That's just not a faith I can stand on. Luckily, it isn't one I have to.
If you are a Christian friend reading this, know that you are being watched. Every move that you make is being held to a standard. It may not be right or fair, but it's what is happening. Please put down your need to pass along pain for understanding and instead sit in vulnerability. To say it will be hard and painful is an understatement. But if you are certain of your faith, know that you can rely on someone who has already been through it.
If you are a non-Christian friend reading this, I am sorry. I am sorry for any moment where I have acted in pain and caused to question my beliefs and my principles. There are no major world religions that I know of that advocate for the causing of pain to benefit one's own ego. I don't believe retaliatory behavior is justifiable. But we are all human. We will all fail. The only thing we can do is try, the next time around to sit with one another better in our moments of need - where the desire for empathy tempts us down a path to cause more pain. Please be patient with people because they are imperfect.
Today, I was watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy. Before you pick apart my taste in television shows, please listen to this anecdote. It's Christmas at the hospital. Most of the doctors and interns, skeptical about the holidays and faith in general, have been immersing themselves cases, avoiding acknowledgment or celebration of anything. An intern, Alex, is stressed and trying to study in between rounds to retake his boards, which he failed the first time. The stakes are high - if he does not pass, his internship is revoked and he does not become a surgeon. Systematically, the other interns have been helping Alex study by simulating undiagnosed patients. They one by one get called to cases. The last intern to come and help is Izzy, whom Alex has cheated on and lied to. Here's what happens:
This can be what it feels like - as a Christ-follower or not - to put a stop to retaliatory action. Even when we are mad and hurt, we choose helpfulness and forgiveness and vulnerability with those we care about.
Let's stop being eye-gougers.
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