I've talked often about the notion I've had concerning an internet presence that features me that I did not consent to. A couple of months ago a woman I talked to said she heard that I was big on Reddit. That was news to me. Maybe that's the internet presence I did not consent to. Tonight that notion I've had came to mind at a comic book reading event. I got the vibe, a guilty vibe, that a woman there knew about this presence, possibly on Reddit. Now, I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know for sure.
It turns out that I had shown up to the reading early, so I left to get some coffee and go for a drive. On my drive I remembered the second of three reasons that makes base retaliation not such a good idea. So, let's go over the reasons to not retaliate against people in one's day to day life. 1: One never gets the satisfaction from retaliation that one anticipates, 2, and this is the one I had trouble recalling the other day: Retaliation creates a lot more problems than it solves, and 3, from Dr. David Burns' "Feeling Good:" People never feel as if they deserve to be retaliated against.
With these three reasons to refrain from giving anyone at that reading so much as a dirty look, I returned to the reading. I saw the first reader and then decided to leave. Over the course of winding down my evening, I remembered something very important about forgiveness that I've discovered. One does not forgive someone in hopes of getting something material from the person in return. That's not forgiveness in my book. I call that "niceness."
Some people, I don't really want to be buddies with when I forgive them. Just refraining from retaliating against these people is the extent of my forgiveness of them. But, hell, a lot of people I wind up feeling compelled to forgive happen to be women I'd like to date in some more perfect world than ours. With that thought in mind, that expecting material "rewards" from women I forgive that I'd like to date is not real forgiveness, but rather, what I call "niceness," I would say that refraining from retaliating against such women, and leaving it at that, will have to suffice for forgiveness as well.
It turns out that I had shown up to the reading early, so I left to get some coffee and go for a drive. On my drive I remembered the second of three reasons that makes base retaliation not such a good idea. So, let's go over the reasons to not retaliate against people in one's day to day life. 1: One never gets the satisfaction from retaliation that one anticipates, 2, and this is the one I had trouble recalling the other day: Retaliation creates a lot more problems than it solves, and 3, from Dr. David Burns' "Feeling Good:" People never feel as if they deserve to be retaliated against.
With these three reasons to refrain from giving anyone at that reading so much as a dirty look, I returned to the reading. I saw the first reader and then decided to leave. Over the course of winding down my evening, I remembered something very important about forgiveness that I've discovered. One does not forgive someone in hopes of getting something material from the person in return. That's not forgiveness in my book. I call that "niceness."
Some people, I don't really want to be buddies with when I forgive them. Just refraining from retaliating against these people is the extent of my forgiveness of them. But, hell, a lot of people I wind up feeling compelled to forgive happen to be women I'd like to date in some more perfect world than ours. With that thought in mind, that expecting material "rewards" from women I forgive that I'd like to date is not real forgiveness, but rather, what I call "niceness," I would say that refraining from retaliating against such women, and leaving it at that, will have to suffice for forgiveness as well.
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