29/02/2015
Another violent man, another woman suffering. I can hear her
through the walls of my room though the sound is muffled by the rain outside. I
struggle to figure out whether the noise is coming from next door or
downstairs. I pace. Should I go over there and knock on the door? What if I
make it worse for her? It’s already a lot worse than the last one. She isn’t
just getting a few slaps. The beating started with the sound of breaking glass
and what sounded like a rack of dishes being thrown to the floor. Who do you
think will be cleaning up that mess afterwards?
I can’t handle this shit. It makes me so angry and upset. I
don’t understand how someone can be so brutal to another human being. I don’t
understand how someone can hurt the person they claim to love. The guy next
door has been with his girlfriend for something like two years and how often in
that time has he used her as a punching bag? The violence erupted out of the
blue. Things were quiet next door and the lights were out, I thought they had
gone to bed early – the beating seemed to come out of nowhere…without
provocation, rhyme or reason.
I have to try hard to see these violent men as humans. I
have to try hard to see beyond the act of violence. Not in order to make
excuses or justify their behaviour, but in order to feel compassion instead of
anger. I need to rise above feeling
angry: First, for my own sanity and well-being because anger is a burden too
heavy for my heart to carry; and second, because if I want to create a world of
non-violence than I need to start by eliminating the aggressiveness and rage
inside of me. While anger might have its place in any struggle for justice, it
is an emotion that can only take us so far. How can we hope to change the world
if we don’t change ourselves first? If I react in anger then I reinforce the perpetrator’s
violent behaviour by demonstrating that anger is a normal and acceptable way to
resolve our problems. When what I really want to show him is that as humans we
can control our emotions and we can choose to react differently. Using violence
is a choice; it is not who we ARE. Consequently, a person can CHOOSE to use
violence or can choose NOT to use violence.
I don’t believe that people should be defined by their worst
actions. People are neither good nor evil, but we all have within us the
capacity to DO good or evil. If we say that someone “IS violent” then violence
becomes the defining aspect of their identity; violence becomes a part of who he
is rather than something he does. Violence, in this sense, is portrayed as a
fatalistic character flaw that the person cannot change easily which
subsequently removes accountability (ex: it’s not his fault, he was born that
way). However, if we see violence as something a person DOES instead of IS than
it becomes something they can control. We might not be able to change who we
ARE but we can change what we DO. Thus, I would like to retract the statement I
made above: My neighbour is not a violent man; he is a man who last night CHOSE
to use violence against his girlfriend. Next time, I hope he will make a
different choice.
It might seem like simple semantics, but rephrasing the
discourse this way gives me hope that things can change. Currently, society
teaches men to use violence to resolve their differences, but if violence is
something someone can learn then it can also be UNlearned. Men can learn to
control their anger and they can learn to use non-violence. But in order to
help these men change their behaviours we need to be able to see them as human,
not as monsters; so that they can also see themselves as human. We need to be
able to show them compassion and help them commit to a life of non-violence by
showing them that they have a choice; that they do not have to use violence.
…Beautiful words. A nice thought…but I’m not there yet. As
much as I would like to be able to show compassion and forgiveness; as much as
I would like to rise above it all; I’m still dealing with my own anger.
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