I heard “don’t get mad – get even” a lot when I was a kid.
My Dad eventually stopped saying it, as he turned to some version of belief in karma – that bad people who kept doing bad things would get the same in return.
Something I’ve learned since childhood is that ‘getting the same’ requires someone else willing to plan and effect that re-balancing.
It turns out that when ‘bad’ people hang out with people who believe the same things, there’s usually little comeuppance, if any. The man who stole $130,000 from my Dad’s business never received any punishment from his peers, nor did he call himself to account for his thievery.
My Dad was enraged by Tom’s betrayal – mostly because it hurt our family deeply. Still, Dad’s anger in the days and weeks after did not allow him to find an effective way forward to care for us in the months and years ahead. By the time Dad was composed, Tom was long gone. The damage was irreparable.
Caring hearts can be proportionally fierce; they often meet injustice with rage. This capability can consummate with a cost: burning up all the energy required to plan, to act, to play the long game – to ‘get even’, as it were.
Today, I am seeing “don’t get mad – get even” in an entirely different light. I see the care, and the rage in light of Dobbs – supernovas of energy and lashing out at potential sources of peril and pain. These actions, while understandable in the short term, harm the future by alienating allies and others we need to protect what we cherish. It forecloses access to a robust strategic plan backed by a coalition of those willing to re-balance injustice.
Dobbs was a victory 50 years in the making for the other side. Half a century. What can anger do against half a century of inertia? Nothing, that’s what – nothing other than exhaust us, deplete us, and have us looking backward when the future is where the remedies are.
Dad, you were right.
Don’t get mad – get even.
Maybe both, but never the former at the cost of the latter.
Intersection 9 