Sweet Revenge

How do you know when a revengeful act is worth it? Well, that's it, you don't. For me, revenge is like any other desires like eating, sleeping, or shopping. You think that doing a desirable act would make you feel good, but afterwards, you end feeling even worse than before. Consider an example when you're fasting in Ramadan. When it is time for you to buy food to break the fasting, you think that you would be able to finish all those foods, and they look very delicious. But as soon as you have crossed your limit, and you realize there are still more foods left, and you feel so bloated and so close to vomiting out all the excess in your stomach - you realize, it was a bad decision after all.

I've had my fair share of revengeful act in my life, and the exact same thing happened. None of them made me feel good afterwards. But, what makes the pre-revenge feeling so strong? Why even after learning again and again that it doesn't make us feel good, we cheat away and still be able to convince ourselves that "this time, it is different"? Psychologists from Germany, Ernst Fehr and Simon G¨echter, suggested that revenge (like eating and sleeping and having sex) is an evolutionary behavior. It is evolutionary because, 1) without it, it is assumed that the society will collapse, 2) we grow up watching/being taught at/believing/being brainwashed by our environment asking for retribution everytime a transgression happens. It's like, when something bad occurs and we don't do something to "correct" it, there's something wrong with us. Although it can be a bad thing sometimes, we still keep it as part of our value system.

So, when it's part of your life, you do it because you believe it's okay to do it, until you realize you do it excessively that it is not okay anymore. It's like eating, again. You eat because we eat to survive, then you eat and eat and eat until you realize you should have stopped 4 plates ago. You try to get revenge, and try and try and try, until your acts have gone so far that it doesn't only hurt the person you have revenge at, but also yourself and possibly other people you care about.

So, I guess it takes a strong and really determined person to know when to stop before it gets worse. The willpower needs to be trained to taught so you have the vigilance and the wisdom.