"You Cant Fight Fire With Fire" Episode Sixty-Eight

Welcome to Honor Your Truth

The “Is It True?” Episode Sixty-Eight

“You can’t fight fire with fire”

Many, many moons ago one of my sisters bit another one of my sisters really hard in the back. I don’t remember who bit who, but I do remember the teeth marks. I can still picture them. My mom told the one who was bitten to bite the other one back and to bite back hard. She didn’t want to do it and she was crying. We were all crying and running around wild. Ironically we were all in the den, an appropriate place for the little savages that we were at times. The den was for “The Brady Bunch” and scrapping. My sister ripped the button off the leather couch some time in the middle of all the ruckus and it seemed that everyone was in trouble for one reason or another. My mom was big into dramatic solutions. If you were bored, you were told to play in the street. Orchard Road was lined with trees and winding. It was impossible to go the speed limit, even in a “hand me down” beater type car. It was a speed trap that the police would hide in, yet this deterred no one……anyone who could drive while we still lived there eventually got a ticket. What started out as a country road became a dangerous playground that we were sent to play in, that was the idea anyway, but we played in the yard. Even though we were told that no other kids fought like we did, we rarely fought. It was our natural state to want love and to be happy, not to fight. When our dog was annoying, my mom would throw it down the stairs. I can still hear the whimpering and it bothers me. Our natural state is not to want to harm anyone or anything. It doesn’t feel good. My mom was angry but couldn’t say it, couldn’t talk about it. She couldn’t put it where it belonged. Better said and let go, than kept in secret. It must come out some way, somehow. Internalized anger becomes depression and anxiety. She had a little of both and a ton of kids with no one to turn to but a bottle of Dewars. I cannot imagine the suffering.

What often starts out very small can grow very big, very fast, if we let it. Anger can spiral out of control fast. If we are not careful, not conscious, it can and will feed on itself. I shut my sisters hand in the bathroom door in a battle over the last chocolate chip cookie. A couple that I know has no windshield wipers on either of their cars over mail left on the kitchen table. Arguments escalate. What otherwise may be some trivial thing like a cookie or the mail triggers past hurt and shame bringing to the surface all of the feelings that haven’t been expressed, all of the forgiveness that never happened, all hopes and fears that never moved from hope and fear, to love and safety when they should have. You can scream as loud as you possibly can but if someone can’t hear you softly, calmly, they will never hear you over their own yelling…..they won’t hear you at any volume. They can’t. They won’t. They either “get it”, or they don’t. No argument is ever truly won this way. This cannot change a heart. One may concede due to sheer exhaustion, but is a heart ever really changed that way? Is it really changed or just waiting, resting, until the next time someone doesn’t do the dishes or put the seat down. A change of heart comes from a place of peace. Someone said what they needed to and someone contemplated…..decided to change because it was of value to them. Occasionally, in a brilliant moment of clarity, a person may decide a fight just isn’t worth it… the loss, the unhappiness, the pain……and decides they just don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t need to be right that badly. I do not need you to be wrong for me to be right. I can step away from this insanity…this viscous circle that is wrapped around me and breathe. Fighting doesn’t work.

What does revenge accomplish really? How does it make us feel inside? Better? I don’t think so. It can never bring back the past and change it. Seeking revenge has never motivated me enough to take any sort of action. How awful to be stuc...