As I always say everywhere, no human being is completely helpless. Of course, everyone is created with different abilities, but everyone is created with equal potential as well. As proof, everyone who can do good is also capable of doing bad no matter what background, social status, education level, and others. Everyone is capable of doing something. So, what do I want to say?
Many people intentionally do bad things to other people just because they feel capable of doing it, feel they are better, stronger, and have more right to treat others as they please. I was thinking isn’t everyone capable of doing something like that? Something bad is often easier to do than something good isn’t it?
So what most often prevents us from doing something bad to other people? Of course not always because we are good people who don’t want to hurt anyone, especially people who have hurt us very badly. I don’t know other people, but from what I’ve experienced when someone has hurt me so much, there’s a very big desire in me to get back at them. “I can hurt this person more than what this person did to me,” my mind.
But in the end, I didn’t. Why? As soon as I got to control myself better, I realized that everything had a price. I don’t care if it’s called coward, because indeed I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay the price. What price?
I don’t know how to put it, I just believe that everything has a price. A kind of the law of cause and effect, or it’s often called the proverb “what goes around comes around.”
I believe that this world is a kind of market full of buying and selling activities, in which there is a law that good is money, and bad is debt. Every good we do is the coffers that are collected to buy something that has a far greater value of goodness. Whereas every bad thing is a debt that we will pay off sooner or later.
I believe that because of course like everyone, I have a good side and also a bad side. Unfortunately, no matter how the world treats us, the law of cause and effect still applies. No matter how sick we are, we must not take it out on others. Other people’s business to hurt us, is their business, but when we hurt others, it’s our business to God or whatever we believe in. We are faced with these transactions all the time, something like “You always have a choice, choose this or choose that, and each choice has consequences.” I feel we are all always in the transaction no matter what the circumstances. That’s the hardest side of life, isn’t it?
From this fact I also realized that kindness is not always about doing something, often when we can hold ourselves back from doing something it can be a great kindness too. Even in the religion I believe is taught, that “preventing evil is more important than seeking good.” The point is we don’t have to feel like we have to do something big to be able to do good, sometimes it’s enough to hold ourselves back, and maybe it can be of great value. “Oh, I think it’s still hard.” I know.
The fact that everything has a price, of course, terrifies me, and instantly makes me recall every bad thing I’ve ever done. How do I pay for it? Am I up to it? Is all the pain I’m going through right now enough to pay for it? But on the other hand, it also makes me feel enough for the people who have hurt me, that I don’t need to do anything to get back at them, or just hope that something bad will happen to them. That fact made me enough because it gave me the belief that sooner or later, with or without me seeing it, the bad things they purposely did to me would eventually pay off. Because that’s the way it works.
How about an apology?
I think that sorry can’t make up for anything, sorry is just an attempt to make ourselves feel better. Sorry can’t replace what’s lost, sorry can’t heal the pain. Moreover, sorry without realizing it, which is bullshit. We even often ask and forgive each other people who do not have a meaningful conflict. Sorry is trite, and it's in relation to the things discussed here, I think we can apologize anytime and as much as we want but that still doesn’t pay off anything. Can a debt be paid with an apology? Debt can only be paid by payment, or the sincerity of the debtor, as well as bad deeds that we do intend to hurt others. Not with the word sorry, which is moreover only used for formality.
I’m writing this to convey that doing bad things to someone is a serious thing, as well as to remind myself because it seems that this is often overlooked. People go around talking about financial management, and debt management, but forget that there is some kind of ‘bad good’ transaction that requires serious management that is most of the time ignored.
What if it feels like we’re always trying to do good, but what we receive feels like it’s always like shits? I don’t know if this is true or not, but it works to calm me down when I feel those days: if painful things happen not to pay for our past mistakes and badness, then it’s definitely to buy good things at great value in the future.
