~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Most of my life I’ve not been a name-caller, either by nature or nurture. But about eight years ago, I realized my Irish was rising steadily as I fell under the malice of a spiteful fellow and have been aping him ever since: if he’s getting away with it and making my blood boil, I’m going to return it tit for tat.
It is demoralizing. As in, my morals have slipped way beneath my goodwill and conscience.
I call him Trumplethinskin and Don PoorLeone. So clever. (I did not make them up, just read the first one on a placard at the first protest after an inauguration eight years ago and the second in the media recently.)
I am less than proud of calling some strange person names and yet I do it anyway. I am neither religious nor mean, but I am obviously easily swayed toward retaliation rather than compassion when I get ticked off.
Do all of us humans have a mean streak lurking when fed constantly by an incorrigible bully?
In a book I’m reading, a main character has been picked on and beaten up as a boy. But he learned somehow as he matured to say, “It does the world no good to return evil for evil. I try now to return good instead.”
How do I do this?
I am trying; I work on compassion daily for people I don’t like, including this influential one I call names, even in print. I try to understand how he must have been treated when he was young, by his parents, siblings, schoolmates and decided to give as bad as he got. He does not lean toward goodness unless it’s for him.
He is not my only nemesis toward goodness. I’m not yet adept at forgiveness of people who are thick-skinned and mean. I have a neighbor who cuts down trees. My mean name for him is Paul Bunyan. I have long thought I came from Druids, oak tree worshipers out of Ireland, pre-written history. This Paul Bunyan makes me nuts, cutting down trees that are old yet healthy, beautiful, casting comforting shade as they bring down the summer temperatures 10 or 20 degrees beneath their canopies. What’s he got against trees?
And what is this person, me, to do? Continue working at goodness? Or succumbing to the delight of calling a hateful person by hateful names? It is an arduous test of any goodwill I might have.
Years ago when my kids were in grade school, a neighborhood father told me a story of when he moved into junior high and became the butt of jokes and mean tricks. “The fourth time some kid pushed my head into the metal drinking fountain,” he told me, “I got a bloody nose, turned around without a thought and punched him in the face.”
He was left alone from then on.
Living the right life or understanding what life is about has been defined: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It was said by Winston Churchill, an inspired wordsmith, about the Soviet Union.
It delineates to some extent a conundrum of my life, defined more explicitly by The American Dictionary as: “’A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma’ depicts something that is profoundly puzzling or confusing, shrouded in layers of complexity or ambiguity. It is often used to describe situations, events, or even individuals that defy easy explanation or understanding. This enigmatic idiom underscores the intricacies of human experiences and the profundity of our world.”
I guess my dilemma is simply human. I am simply human. Trying half-heartedly to be a good one.
