I do not take revenge. Because I am self-centered. Just a little bit.
I would love to feel like a saint after realizing and confessing the first sentence, but it is what it is.
What am I, then? Good and nice, or just strategic?
Can choosing not to be harmful make you a good one automatically?
Where is the line between goodness by instinct and goodness by choice?
Is one more valuable than another? Can intention determine the quality of goodness? Does goodness have to carry a certain quality? Or is it just about the absence of harm?
We have all been treated unfairly at some point. Betrayed. Gossiped about. Excluded.
What was your reaction? What was your stance? What did you decide?
If you ask me, I do nothing.
At least, this is how it looks from the outside.
No drama. No revenge.
People around me sometimes criticize me for acting like a prophet. They expect some kind of reaction — perhaps anger or revenge, something that would make the situation feel more balanced.
But when I think about my nothing-quality reaction, I realize that the serenity behind it does not come from my being a moral slave or a saint. It comes simply from self-centrism.
I was simply emphasizing myself in my own life a little more.
I was afraid that those people would put a wedge between the person I was today and the person I aspire to be tomorrow. So, I learned to remove people from my life when I felt that they were taking me somewhere I did not want to go.
I chose not to spoil myself in their mud.
Basic logic 101: you are no longer part of my life. And if you could treat me like that, then I was probably never truly a part of your life either.
Maybe this was the ordinary of the ordinary.
Maybe ruling over my free will was my ordinary way of testing the borders of who I was.
Sorry to have the audacity to make it all about getting to know myself.
I saw those kinds of situations as social experiments. I would play out, like, a hundred different scenarios in my head, just to see where they would take me.
Doing the right thing was also feeding my subtle arrogance. There was something satisfying about knowing that I was the one who did not do the bad thing.
What is required to do the bad thing or to be bad? Impulses? Lack of thought? Being afraid of spending time with yourself? Taking revenge because of what you are lacking in your default package of life? Something different?
Sometimes it is good to enjoy the privilege of being the one who did nothing wrong — the one who does not have to carry the moral burden of the original act and is therefore free to decide what to do next.
I am not talking about life-threatening events, of course. I am talking about the ordinary human situations where someone chooses to hurt you, and you still have the freedom to decide what you are going to do with that experience.
There is an obvious comfort in putting your head on the pillow knowing that you did no harm to anybody.
And perhaps this is why I keep coming back to being good and nice.
But again, is it goodness in me, or just something that once helped my ancestors survive?
Do you believe that human beings have a “tamable” good essence? Or is it simply our mastery of free will?
Honestly, I do not think everyone has, or can have, a “good and nice” essence. Maybe none of us truly has one in our most plain forms.
I sometimes think the problem with this narrative is that we take for granted that every human being has this “tamable” core.
But how can we build the good and nice if this is the situation?
Too much is expected from us while too little attention is paid to who we actually are and what we are capable of.
I always end up returning to these questions: who we actually are, what we are capable of, how diverse and unified we can be at the same time?
I sometimes realize that some people think that, at least, the outfit of good and nice does not suit them. Where is this perception or belief rooted? Why does “not being good and nice” become one’s persona?
I came to realize that I do not take revenge simply because I am a proportionally self-centered person. This came from questioning myself: why did I not find dealing with that person worthy of my time?
This attitude is something good and nice, actually. You choose not to get involved in the journey of someone who chooses not to be good and nice. It requires less effort spent on others, more respect for yourself. Kind of energy saving, on your own terms.
This is where I invite “self-centrism” to the stage — not to create the good in me, but to help me sustain it.
Serving good and nice, or abstaining from bad and harmful, may require a healthy self-centered mechanism rather than a holy essence in one.
Sometimes all is that simple.
I think we do not have to dive into the romantic set of thought of “carrying a good essence” if you feel this is not the situation for you. You are a human being, very unique and similar in a lot of ways.
Sometimes serving something positive does not denote anything glorious at all. It does not prove that you carry some kind of holy essence.
It is never about lacking the capacity to do harm. It is more about having that capacity and choosing not to use it — choosing not to do harm and doing the right thing.
Following our impulses is one possibility. Choosing something that requires more from us is another.
Maybe the key is facing our primitive core and seeing what good and nice our advanced core can achieve with it.
It may be as simple as that. If you dare to face whatever pulls you by the arm along the way.
Artwork: One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, Wang Ximeng
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