It's easy to be good around things that take no effort. The point when you find out what someone's really made of, is what they do when things are hard. How does someone act when they've messed up? What does a person do when doing the right thing will cost them a lot? This is when you find out if someone is genuinely honourable.
Do we allow anger to justify us acting without integrity? I think people are always entitled to defend themselves and protect their own boundaries. In practice this often manifests as moving out of situations, stepping away from people, refusing to keep doing a thing, declining to show up, and so forth. Often boundaries are best protected by moving away from the people who violate them.
Sometimes it can be necessary and important to seek something restorative. That might involve getting back resources that have been taken from you, or reasserting your personhood in some way. You might need witnessing, or community recognition that you have been wronged. You might need help recovering from the wrong done to you.
However, all too often, anger becomes a justification for punishing the person who has caused hurt. Acting dishonourably in face of bad treatment doesn't work. Not if you want to uphold any ideas of fairness, justice or honour. When we let our emotional responses to people justify causing harm to them, a line has been crossed. Anger itself does not create an entitlement to lash out, to punish or to seek revenge. It's also worth noting that there's nothing especially restorative about revenge. It might give some temporary satisfaction, but it doesn't undo the harm done, and it may in turn cause others to turn against you. Revenge keeps you focused on the past and can trap you in your own misery, where seeking something restorative will help you get over things and move on.
One of the most important things to guard against is lashing out at people who have called you out on your mistakes. This comes up a lot around issues of privilege. If you get something wrong and are accidentally sexist, or racist, or ableist or anything else of that ilk and someone calls you on it, they're expressing faith that you are someone who would want to do better. Getting things wrong can be uncomfortable, but doubling down on a mistake only makes it worse. Lashing out because you feel uncomfortable about being called out on your mistakes is an especially bad choice as a response and can only make things worse.
It takes courage to overcome humiliation and go on to improve things. It takes courage to own mistakes and square up to them. We can be compassionate with ourselves while we're doing that, but if we are to be compassionate with others we have to be open to hearing when we're getting things wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment