Don't Start Nothin' Won't Be Nothin'

I sometimes wish I were better at holding grudges. That sounds like a humblebrag, like I'm about to tell you what a magnanimous well of human forgiveness I am, but honestly it's more a question of things fading as I get older, specifically energy and memory. Who was that guy who said that thing to me that I hated...? Bah, it'll come to me maybe after I watch seven more YouTube videos by a guy who trims cows' hooves. Don't let anyone ever tell you it's not possible to back into transcendence. The Buddha did it by just taking a nap under some tree, never forget.

There's no denying that a thirst for revenge is an incredible, limitless motivator to action. It not only provides the drive and the disinhibiting spark to action, it also unlocks paths of opportunity that may not have ever otherwise occurred to you in a non-perturbed space. If you're not sure what I mean by that, think of anyone you know who's been divorced, or even I guess just broken up with, and the things this otherwise rational, conflict-averse person is now willing to entertain. Or listen to, like, one country song. You get it.

Or, just to make this as grim as possible, think of the deterioration of the institutions undergirding the traditions and cultural norms of representative democracy and the rule of law in the United States at the moment. The dismantling of the functional state, without regard for (in the best case scenario; this is what passes for optimism these days) or in active hostility to (which feels more correct) the idea of any intersection between state action and human empathy, all can be drawn back to Donald Trump being embarrassed by something Barack Obama said at a dinner a decade ago and Elon Musk being booed on stage at a Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco. Are these typical reactions to targeted social humiliation? Not really. If it were me, I'd do what I normally do, which is have an out-loud argument in the shower by myself in a fantasy version of the same scenario where I slay with all the comebacks and correct levels of indignation I probably swallowed in the moment. I won't say that running for president or crippling the apparatus of the state were ever necessarily on my mind in response for any similar incidents I might have endured, but to be fair 1) my personal humiliations tend not to be televised and 2) as a long term carrier of social anxiety, that type of shock-trauma social surrender happens to me (in my warped perception) like 80 times a regular-ass day.

So yeah, all the bullying I perceive myself to be receiving are almost always an invention of an emotionally abnormal brain and misfiring limbic system. With enough therapy, I've learned to put it in some kind of context, even if the resultant emotions aren't necessarily negotiable: they can be contextualized and rendered survivable if not actually minimize-able. At the end of the day, there just aren't enough hours to exact the appropriate level of get-back to all who have wronged me. I've never really been a list guy.

Which really sucks, if you think about it. So much ambition and drive I'm leaving on the table, all because I want to be a boring, relatively balanced person. If you lean into it, that same kind of shit can get you the song of the year and a Super Bowl halftime show. I didn't think I could say this given how I've been through the course of this year so far, but: maybe I need to get madder?