“The best way to avenge yourself is to not be like that.”
MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.6
“How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?”
SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.27.2
Two quotes in today’s entry of The Daily Stoic book — wow! It must be an important topic: revenge.
Revenge really doesn’t do much for the person who achieves it. We think it makes us feel better. Movies certainly make it out to seem like we’ll feel fulfilled somehow. But we all understand that deep down, we’re just going to feel crummier than before.
Why? Because now you’re the bad guy. You thought that you were different, that you made wise choices for your life. But in the end, you took a petty opportunity to attack someone and cause them harm. Even worse, you weren’t true to yourself. You did something that wasn’t good for you.
Along the way, you’ve opened yourself up to more hurt, and risked more harm to yourself. As everyone knows, it’s a vicious cycle and very unlikely that your act of revenge was the end of the story.
It’s just better and wiser to skip the revenge entirely. Don’t meet negative with negative. Try to be bigger than that, higher than that, kinder than that, for your own sake and the other person’s too. Wise people don’t fight, after all — they’re too smart to do that to themselves. They focus on love instead.
