If you have ever been betrayed, personally or professionally, you know how tempting it is to seek revenge, to "do unto others" what was done unto you. If you're lucky, you have principles, family, and friends who help you process these feelings; people who commiserate (literally
are miserable with you), while reinforcing (
giving power) to the good in you and others.
Seeing others positively reveals your own positive traits. On the other hand, your words could reveal negative perceptions of others that are linked to narcissism, antisocial behavior, and even neuroticism.—Dustin Wood, PhD, Wake Forest University
They prevent you from going over to the dark side, so to speak. If you are unlucky, your natural desire to hurt is given juice and you join in the vicious cycle of hurt. Such are my thoughts as I reflect on this blog, after a relative recently suggested that the purpose here was to "punish" my family and the church.
Punish? I rejected this out of hand. I don't condemn or exclude here; I encourage conversation and multiple points of view. Right?
This blog helps further understanding and connection, not hatred or rejection.
Most of the time, at least?
Punishment is what THEY do, I said. It's pure projection. All that alienation and gossip and disinheritance. No wonder they think I'm punishing them. That that is their stock and trade! I even reasoned that retaliation could be the primary psychological basis for Laestadianism: its exclusivism, its emphasis on "hating the world," its shunning of apostates. They had good reason to be mad, those Sami and the poor Finns who met in the tundra and fanned the flames of the early church. They could not be blamed for wanting retaliation for the state's onerous taxes, the church's excesses, the colonizers' disdain, the alcohol trade that wreaked havoc on Lapland, the maltreatment of the poor and dispossessed, the condescension and self-proclaimed authority and superiority. Or simply for Laestadius' supreme jerk of a father, who made his family life so intolerable.
We see in others what we fear in ourselves. —Psychology Today
Certainly there is abundant cause for the abused to create a religion—or even a mindset— in which they assume the upper hand, at least in their own minds. I'm sure that's a survival mechanism, like a protective sheath around a seed, so that it can literally pass through the belly of a beast unharmed, so that once it has landed in nourishing soil, can awaken and grow.
And as much I'd like to think I'm above revenge, the waters we swim in become part of our being, and only by becoming aware of them can we choose to disrupt the cycle. While we learn with our mother's milk whom to love and whom to hate, what to encourage in ourselves and what to suppress, it is never too late to learn anew.
That is my hope.
And that is the answer to "why the blog." My writing is not intended to punish, though that may be the perception among certain people who have been trained to see enemies where there are none.
When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.—Desmond Tutu
Yesterday our daughter pointed up into a canopy of trees and said: "Mama, look at the pretty holes that the insects made."
It hadn't occurred to me to find them beautiful until she did. They look like tiny galaxies!
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.—Anais Nin
What do you think?