End the anger, seek closure, move on!

Seek peaceful closure than revenge in situations where you have been betrayed, back-stabbed, let down or trampled upon.

The normal reaction to an emotional or physical breach of trust or violation of personal space or privacy is anger. You demand justice and want it instantly. And when it is not immediately forthcoming, as is normally the case, your anger brews within, leaving you in a perpetually explosive state. You are like a violent volcano, vulnerable, emotionally fragile, that is waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation. While the best and spiritually recommended path is one of unconditional forgiveness, many people may not immediately be willing to consider it. In such and similar instances, seeking a peaceful closure can restore the victim to a state of emotional equilibrium.

Dr. Nancy Berns, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Drake University, Iowa, US, and the author of “Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us” says, “Focusing on vengeance intensifies thoughts, emotions, and behaviors related to aggression and anger. Although revenge may be sweet for a brief time, regret, fear of retaliation, and shame are some of the negative emotions that follow acts of revenge in the long term.” I read the story of a young mother of two, in an issue of ‘Open’ magazine, who says a man, who she treated like her father, tried to rape her in her teens. She says she escaped, but the next day, she looked him in the eye and made him apologize. This suddenly changed the power equation. “Less than 24 hours after it happened, I entered his room. He tried to seem concerned like I was a child with childlike problems who he needed to pander to. He denied it in a voice louder than mine. He said I misinterpreted his affection towards me. It was very difficult for me to hear that. He told me that it was all in my head. That made me very angry. I didn’t raise my voice, but I looked at him and my voice didn’t waver. I told him I didn’t want to blackmail him. What he did was wrong. He was taken aback when I went through the inappropriate details, asking him if he would touch his own kids like that. At some point, the tone of the conversation changed. He got scared, and I saw him for the wimp he was. He accepted what he did and apologized. After so many years, I can understand what I was trying to do. We often miss a very important component of justice. It has to help people move on, not be stuck forever in the injustice. For me to move on, I needed to hear him apologize. I needed to see him as the weaker one, not me. I needed to stop feeling fear or anger when I saw him. We all have our dark moments, but no one, not me nor him, wants to be bound by only the darkness,” the lady recounts in ‘Open’.

So perfectly said. We all have our dark moments. But we must want to move beyond the darkness. So, seeking closure, a peaceful one, is far more intelligent, practical and profitable than just fighting a battle that will leave no one the real victor. A few years ago, the entire team in our Bengaluru (South India, India’s IT hub) office was poached by a competitor. One fine morning, we were left with 5 irate clients (we are a consulting Firm) in Bengaluru and no team to service them! I flew to Mumbai and walked into the competitor’s office without an appointment and met their CEO, who had personally ‘masterminded’ this coup. I sought him out for tea at a nearby Irani café and shared my angst with him. I remember breaking down. Inconsolably, for a long time. He did not apologize. Instead he declared: “All is fair in business and in war. I was only able to poach them because you were unable to retain them.” I learnt an invaluable business lesson in that moment. I also felt a strange peace envelope me. Till that time, I had been seething with rage, wishing this competitor the worst, wanting to see him fail in business and in Life. In fact, when I opened the conversation at the café with him, I called him a cheat, an unethical businessman and a poor human being. But after I broke down, after I learnt what I needed to from his act and his justification, I was at peace. Almost magically, this closure was far more powerful to me than all the hatred and the fury that was brewing with me up until that moment. (This story is recounted in my Book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money’, Westland, August 2014.)

Renaissance author and English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561~1626) has said, “In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior.” End the anger. Don’t perpetrate it. Reach out, seek closure with those that have wronged you and find abiding, lasting, beautiful peace. 

Make peace with an incomplete Life

No matter how hard you try, some part of your Life will remain unfulfilled, incomplete, sometimes, even irreparable….

This is true for each of us, for every Life.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi: Worshipped by legions of fans
Picture: Raghu Rai Source: Internet

The latest issue of Open magazine has a poignant story of Raghavendra Bhimsen Joshi, 69, eldest son of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the late singer-genius. Raghavendra was born through Joshi’s first wife, Sunanda. Lhendup Bhutia, who wrote the Open piece, talks to Raghavendra about the latter’s just-released Marathi book (also translated in Kannada) titled Ganaaryache Por (Singer’s Son). In the book, and in the interview with Bhutia, Raghavendra tells, with both reverence to his father and with total honesty, the tale of how his mother, he and his siblings had to face neglect and abandonment after his father married a second time, a woman named Vatsala, and eloped with her. “When people wrote articles or books on my father and his personal Life, we would never be mentioned…It was extremely hurtful. Here was this star, a public figure growing in stature, and here we were, neglected and alone,” Raghavendra told Bhutia. Raghavendra believes that as the years went by and as the guilt of neglecting his first wife and children grew, Joshi, who already loved his drink, took to the bottle more. Raghavendra confesses that he never really mustered the courage to either ask his famous father why Sunanda and her children were neglected. And although Raghavendra wanted to be a singer himself, he could never bring himself up to ask his accomplished father to train him. Then, a few years before Bhimsen Joshi’s death, as Joshi lay in bed with a fractured leg, Raghavendra asked him: “You could so effortlessly move people to tears with your voice, how could you be so cruel to your own family?” Joshi did not reply but, recalls Raghavendra, instead cried. Even as Joshi cried some more, Raghavendra took his permission and sang him a song. Again Joshi said nothing. Raghavendra sang for Joshi, one more time, a few years later, as Joshi lay on his deathbed. At the end of the song, Joshi, too weak to speak, gestured to the lone nurse in attendance in the room, with his eyes, what a fine Raghavendra was!

Such a great singer. Someone that legions of fans adored and worshipped. A Bharat Ratna. Yet Joshi died unable to express his love and admiration, per Raghavendra’s version, for his eldest son and without being able to ever acknowledge his first wife and her children in public.

This is Bhimsen Joshi’s story. Gandhi too, per his oldest  Hariram’s point of view, failed miserably as a father – although he is revered and remembered as the Father of the Nation! But none of us is any different. Each of us do have some part of our Life remaining unfulfilled or incomplete. With someone it could be a relationship with a spouse, with someone else it could be with a child. Someone could have a huge health challenge or the loss of particular physical faculty. Another could never perhaps get his career in order. Or someone will have either no parent to look up to or may not have one that understands.

Life deals with each of us differently. Even so, a spot of sunshine is surely ordained in everyone’s lifetime. Just as a patch of pain is. Sometimes, the factor causing pain may end up being a permanent aspect of your Life! When you realize that you can’t do anything to remove that factor which is causing you pain, learn to either accept it or ignore it. Accepting or ignoring the pain will not make the pain go away. But it will surely help you deal with it better. And it may well help you not to suffer.

But the choice to accept or ignore, whatever’s causing you pain, can be made only when you understand that there are some aspects of your Life which will be unfixable. Acceptance is easier in a physical context. For instance, if you lose a limb in an accident, it is easier for you to accept this reality and not grieve over it or suffer. But if you lose a parent’s trust or understanding or don’t get her affection, you will struggle with both accepting or ignoring it.

Intelligent living, however, means to be able to see a pattern to your Life – with regard to your relationships or with regard to those aspects that don’t seem to have ever worked and to simply move on. That’s when you will be in complete peace even with an incomplete Life!