A Journey of Myself

I have learned something about myself, and something about another person. I've been challenged to make these two realities exist in my mind. I have to write it out because I've thought about it enough to know just thinking about it is not enough.


A person I know told me a story. This guy was talking, and somehow came up with a story from his years in high school. It was meant to be a story illustrating justice.


He proceeded to tell me, and the two other people in this private residence room, that he slashed tires on a guy's truck repeatedly because, and I'm quoting, "He was so arrogant. You could see him as he drove away realizing that his tires were slashed and that he'd just cracked his rims. He deserved what he got."


This is someone who invited me into his world. He was sharing something which, in his very serious opinion, was a Right and Good Thing to have done. He was expecting my support, if not my simple acknowledgement that what transpired was Good and Right.


I was appalled, and I have to say, his conviction that it was a Right and Good Thing to do made me question my initial reaction of horrified anger.


Yes, I admit that it angered me.


I thought instantly, darkly, of someone who had no chance to escape the pain and violence of home. A teenager who had worked to not become his father, or mother, and who had poured the money left from his paycheck (after buying himself and his brother food) into a truck. Not just any truck. One that he washed weekly, one that he was so proud of that he couldn't stop speaking about how wonderful it was. To a couple people it may have seemed like bragging, but we knew it was all he had; we knew it was his first chance to change his stars and build his self-esteem. You could see him thinking, 'maybe if I have something this great, it means I'm worthwhile too.'


And I thought of him, with a truck parked in high grass that would hide his slashed tires, and how he would react when he drove over the speed bumps in the parking lot and his rims announced clearly that they had been broken. Of the money that could have done so many other things in his life, that was supposed to cure all the ills in his world and make him, finally, magically, Someone Who Mattered, was now gone as it had been more than once before and he was left with the life he was trying to escape, rushing back to him.


I wanted to ask this person who shared with me if the victim of his ire (who 'deserved it') committed suicide, and I felt I would have been justified in asking.


Even now, I'm questioning the sanity of my reaction. Is it unfair of me to find abject revulsion in the face of what was meant to be a sharing experience? Is my horror at the storyteller's glee unfounded?


I learned something about both of us. Is that enough? I can't change an emotion, particularly in someone else. And the fascinating juxtaposition that I'm flummoxed by my reaction to someone else, while the person inspiring my empathic quandary continues to feel his story was a perfect illustration of what was Good and Right.


I have never learned to take lightly the injury one person inflicts willingly upon another person.  It may be the wrong answer, and I will have to live with the consequences of it - it will never be okay with me.