The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
Interpretation
Vengefulness traps individuals in a cycle of dependency on those who wronged them, delaying their own healing.
This quote illustrates the ironic nature of seeking revenge; it highlights how a desire for vengeance can create an unhealthy dependency on the person who inflicted harm. Rather than achieving freedom from pain, the injured party ties their emotional well-being to the suffering of their tormentor, ultimately hindering their own healing process and personal growth.
In practice
In a discussion about forgiveness at a community gathering.
Every day after lunch when I was writing my first book, I'd nibble a square of fine chocolate and meditate on all that had gone into its creation: the sun and rain that spilled on the cocoa plant, the soil that nourished it, the hands that picked the beans, and so on. My taste of chocolate became a lesson on the interconnectedness of things, and the infinite blessings for which I am grateful.
I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.
Without dignity, identity is erased.
It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.
Most people, when they hear the disease name, it's all they know about it. It sounds so mild. When I first was sick, for the first 10 years or so, I was dismissed. I was ridiculed and told I was lazy. It was a joke.
For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write
You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe?
Capitalism’s real “grave-diggers” may end up being its own delusional Cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they seem to have trouble grasping a simple fact: Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises-War and Shopping-simply will not work.
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.
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