Revenge: What does it really taste like and will it just take us further along a road of pain?

A man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green — Samuel Bacon

Spoiler Alert— this is not a piece about Star Wars but I couldn’t help myself because STAR WARS…

Ok, let’s get serious now…

I recently spent a chunk of time with a friend who was going through a rough patch.

Maybe this is something of an understatement given this ‘patch’ consisted of a seventeen-year relationship finally coming to a close over the course of a few years, assets being sold and divided as a consequence — including the home the couple had built together and which my friend still lived in — and a business that was teetering somewhat precariously in terms of its long-term financial viability.

A perfect storm that would be challenging for the strongest soul.

Another cruel knife-twist amidst all this was the ex-employee who had left my friend’s business and set up a similar operation, imitating in many ways what my friend had been trying to achieve…and that knife was dug a little deeper by the ex-partner who thought maybe it was time to wind the business up.

All in all, not a pretty situation.

Chatting to my friend about it, for them out of all this horror came a strong (and healthy, it must be said) desire to carry on regardless — to push through all the disruptive change and not let their dreams be dampened.

To still succeed, no matter what.

Behind this, however, at least partly, was a deep angry desire for revenge.

And, on the surface, how could there not be?

Why wouldn’t that hot white anger that burns inside after such betrayal feed the desire for revenge and act as a spur to go on and do well in spite of such a kick in the guts?

As I listened to my friend, seemingly possessed by a wrath unseen since the ancient Greek Furies last walked the earth, I eventually found myself having to interject. It hurt to see the friend so wound up and literally frothing at the mouth at the prospect of success on the back of wreaking vengeance on the those who had wronged them.

My interjection was simple — that revenge was maybe not the best motivation for success.

I was surprised at the reply — that my friend’s psych told him otherwise.

Completely. Flabbergasted.

It seemed inconceivable to me that any psych would encourage this kind of behaviour in someone under their care.

Who was I to negate the claim? I certainly am no psych, even if I feel I’ve lived an interesting enough life, during which I’ve gathered a lot of observations about human nature, from which I have come to my own conclusions about how the psyche works.

…evolution might have wired our minds to think that revenge will make us feel good. Michael Price, APA

And yet it just seemed such a perilous, dark, mentally precarious path to tread.

To hope for someone else’s downfall or pain on the back of your own success and as a means get back at them for those past transgressions against you — how could that end up being a salve for pain?

From where I stood, it seemed that all this kind of motivation could do would be to hardwire those past transgressions and the pain they brought right into the success and achievement one had worked so hard for, so that one could never separate them, thus keeping the burning, hurtful feelings associated with them alive and hot and searing to the soul rather than the sweet balm success should bring.

Luckily, over the course of a few days I felt my friend move back from what I saw as a perilous path along the cliff tops of revenge and elaborate upon a wider range of more positive reasons to succeed.

Not that revenge wasn’t mentioned a few more times in different ways, but it didn’t rear its ugly head quite so distinctly during other discussions, something for which I was glad.

The discussion did prompt me to read up a little on revenge as motivation.

I found this piece by Karyn Hall interesting, and also this by Michael Price. Both offer balanced perspectives on revenge, with some surprisingly good arguments as to why it might not be as negative a motivational force as I assumed it was.

The main thing I took from both is that revenge is ultimately paradoxical. While it can be flipped into the notion of ‘justice’, thus taking on a much more positive spin, it can still cause damage in the way I mentioned above by locking us into some past incident or event and never thus quite being able to let go of all the pain and angst and anger that came with it.

The ‘takeaway’ for me?

While that old saying ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ is touted around endlessly, it might more realistically be rendered as ‘revenge, if not swallowed pretty quickly, can actually taste bloody awful and we might never get the taste of it our of our mouth if we chew on it for too long…’

Cue: cute cat meme…