I’ve never understood violence, but I’m beginning to feel like this all may be a part of the lessons I am supposed to learn in this lifetime. I must learn to forgive, I must learn to love, I must learn to have faith that everything happens for a reason. I am fully capable of forgiving those around me, at times I forgive to a fault. But there are two people who I have yet to forgive: myself and the group of men who attacked my father. I must say that I am closer to forgiving myself than I am to forgiving those men. I have been working for years on learning to forgive myself for mistakes I make, but forgiving the racist men who hurt my dad has never been a priority on my list of things to do. The hatred that I imagine in their souls brings me so far from love and forgiveness that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to learn. This is where I wonder if having grown up with the discussion method has made it harder for me to cope with feelings like this. If I expereienced more violence would I be able to handle this situation better? Maybe, maybe not.
The love my parents showed us growing up has taught me a more valuable life lesson. Because of them, I know how to love. I have had many lessons in love and that helps make it easy for me to find love in all corners of the universe. I love God, I love my family, I love life, I love nature, I love my brothers and sisters in this world. I believe that the way to forgiveness is through love. When I am in a place of love I am closer to forgiving the violent people in my history.
Love. Love is such a powerful force. It is a truly wonderful gift that we have the ability to love, but it seems that there are many people in this world who have yet to learn how to embrace love. I am not just talking about romantic love or platonic love or familial love, I am talking about universal love. A love that encompasses all things in this world, a love that makes everyone and everything so much more beautiful. If we were able to look at the world through the eyes of love can you imagine how beautiful the world would be? Can you imagine how soft yet vibrant every color would be? Can you imagine how meaningful each moment would be? Can you imagine how little violence there would be? If we could all put on our love goggles we would not have a need for violence, for wars, for corporal punishment, for excessive authority, for hate crimes, for physical-sexual-mental abuse, for animal abuse, for self inflicted abuse. But why is it so hard for us to go to that place? Is it a matter of just not knowing any better? I refuse to believe that there are people in this world who are not capable of love – everybody can love! What is it that holds people back from embracing the power of love? Maybe when we figure that out, we can figure out how to stop violence. I don’t need to understand violence anymore – all I need to know is that violence occurs when we forget how to love.
In the field of social psychology, Hannah Arendt coined the famous term, “the Banality of Evil”; people are capable of doing wonderfully beautiful things as equally as they are of doing horribly monstrous things and they both go hand in hand together; you can’t have one without the other. You wouldn’t be able to see the beauty in loving if there wasn’t evil in the world.
I completely agree with you Ashley. I’ve always been fascinated by the Banality of Evil, but I feel like it goes beyond just good and evil. It applies to happy and sad, black and white, love and hate, north and south. Without one we would never know the other which is the case for all polar opposites.
A similar concept I like to think about is a pendulum. A pendulum’s ultimate goal is to try to find it’s middle ground, it’s center of gravity, it happy medium. It does this by swinging from one end to the other thereby creating two distinct polar opposites. Then from that point it can know where the middle is. The pendulum must first define the ends before it can find the middle. Similarly, we as humans cannot find our middle ground until we have expereinced both ends of the spectrum.
Tanya, this series has affected me so deeply – I’ve had tears streaming down my face (yeah, yeah, so what else is new, lol) from a mixture of so many feelings that I’m having trouble articulating them:
love, for who you are and how special you are and how if you weren’t my daughter, I would want to get to know you and be a part of your life
appreciation for how wise you are and how much you continue to grow
admiration for taking your experiences and analyzing them and learning from them and then making and taking the time to express them in such a personal and warm and engaging and thoughtful way
and sadness remembering and reliving the painful experiences you’ve related here
And yet, fascinated by how much we learn from those painful experiences. Thinking about how your anger and desire to retaliate against those men drove you to fantasize about committing violence to the point of torture and how believing that justice won’t take place and there is an unbalance that would only be resolved by you taking matters into your own hands. But then allowing your inner voice to surface and rise above those thoughts.
We’ve all been there, no matter how intellectually and calmly we normally react to distress – feeling that violent kind of fury, so incensed as to imagine pleasure from causing physical pain to another human being; but what enables the difference between thinking/fantasizing about it and leaving it at that and thinking about it and actually following through? What allows us to override those blind emotions with the calm voice of reason?
Thank you for exploring such an interesting topic and provoking further thought. I wonder if on Tuesday there will be people who feel that justice has been compromised to the point where they can no longer listen to their inner voice of reason and instead feel they need to take matters into their own hands?
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And finally Tanya your series has brought me tears of joy because you’ve given me the gift of a lifetime; the gift that every mother wants even though they might not know it until they get it – you’ve sent me your love and appreciation and validation for the way you were parented. Thank you. You are so special and I am so proud of you my heart hurts.
Wow, your mom is amazing. Such a real momma response.
You have an insight, Tanya, that is going to be the epicenter of your parenting.
You are aware of something that is more important than anything else. You will make love the foundation of your home.
Thankyou for sharing this series with us doll.
Theres nothing to say that hasn’t been said by the lovely ladies in front of me, but that this was truly a pleasure.
And now I miss your mom and dad too
I am so glad that you guys took the time to read this. It is a subject that is very important to me; it’s important to all of us. And you guys are the people who help me further explore this concept of love and hate. Without my experiences with all of you, my questions would be even harder to answer. And without your intelligent minds I may not have had any questions at all. My wonderful mom has brought up a new question for me to chew over: what is it that allows us to listen to our voice of reason when we are blinded by emotion? Why are some able to stop their violence, while others are not? Maybe we can all collectively explore this and come up with a deep insightful answer of our own. In any case, I love all of you. Truly deeply love you.