Not Forgetting What Lies Behind: Nice Revenge

Forgetting is not all we can do in response to life's tragedies. Forgetting may be our best choice, in many ways it is our easiest choice, but it is not compulsory. In a society that honors reciprocity over an agape-grounded golden rule, we are free to harm others--with revenge. Though the word “revenge” is harsh, so harsh we find ourselves wanting to deny it is imbeded in our culture, it still recieves aprobation. Our culture aproves “nice” revenge, tolerates displaced revenge, and is facinated by proxy and murderous revenge.

We like to cover our harshness--as we do all our ugliest urges--with a nice veneer. One veneered ugliness is whitewashed with the phrase, “Living well is the best revenge.” This is "nice" revenge, a witty quip held up as the positive response to betrayal and rejection. It has all the characteristics we honor. To live well is to move on, leave behind, forget about the tragedy. It is affirmative, positive, and gives us a cultural hero: one who is apparently healthy, wealthy, happy, and successful. We smile and laugh at the irony and justice when those betrayed or rejected find new and better relationships, but that smile is only a muscle twitch away from a grimace, and the same muscle contraction that powers a belly laugh also powers a racking sob.

Living well to show one has “moved on” is false, even pretentious. Eagerness to live well pushes people past loss without healing, without closure. Showing a good new life is easier than building an actual good life. Wounds remain, suppurating beneath happy veneers. Years after pain people become flushed and tearful when surprised by old remembered agony, even though they have by most external signs moved on to new relationships and lifestyle successess. The veneer of a good new life is thin and easily breached, easily undermined. The need to proudly display the new life leads one to ignore and avoid problems that should be addressed so new relationships may be truely as good as they appear. Additionally, living well to achieve revenge is an empty, ephemeral choice. T.S. Elliot underscored this when he wrote, “to do the right thing for the wrong reason is the greatest treason.” Evil motives for even the best actions poison the doer. The treason is not to others, but to one's own character. As harmful as hidden untreated wounds, the internal poison of revenge grows and festers until it cracks through the shallow surface of the good new life and reveals it to be pretense.