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. 

Seek closure to feel liberated and peaceful

Whenever you feel miserable with someone or something, address the issue or the person, take things head-on. Seek closure. Only then will you feel liberated.

Earlier this week I watched this beautiful Malayalam film called ‘Bangalore Days’ (2014, Anjali Menon). Fahadh Fazil plays a husband who is unable to get over a past relationship. His recklessness on a motorbike had led to the death of his lover (played by Nithya Menen). He’s unable to get over his guilt and so he is unable to lead a normal Life with his wife (played by Nazriya Nazim). When his wife comes to know the cause for his brooding, melancholic, sometimes irritable, behavior, she helps him reconnect with his dead girlfriend’s family. He agrees to visit the family with much trepidation. But when he actually meets them, he achieves a closure – he cries, he apologizes and he tells his girlfriend’s parents how much he loved her and how much he still loves her. That conversation helps him get rid of his guilt and sets him free to engage in the relationship with his wife.

To me, this part of ‘Bangalore Days’ was very real – as were some other parts. I could completely relate to the situation of having an honest conversation with someone and feeling liberated at the end of it. In my forthcoming book, “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money”, I share how I have a very dysfunctional relationship with my mother. And how our relationship has affected the way the rest of my family views me. What started as plain rebellion in my teenage years has ended up leaving, at least me, very uncomfortable in contexts involving my parents and siblings. Yet, I had always wanted to speak my mind, without the fear of being interpreted, rather than being understood, and tell my parents what I feel about the way I have been judged and treated. Every time I tried achieve this, the effort would blow up in my face. And leave me more scathed and scarred. But finally an opportunity presented itself last year, and I talk about this in the book as well, when I did manage to share my feelings openly with my parents – on how I felt being treated the way I was, what I felt about them and how I would like to move on, while accepting that things could never normal the way it would be between a mother and a son. That conversation pretty much delivered a closure to me. Just the fact that I had expressed myself, saying everything that I had always wanted to, and that I was heard out, in a mature, genial conversation, made me feel lighter. I actually felt free – of all simmering discontentment, guilt and grief. I will eternally be grateful to my parents, particularly my mother, for giving me that opportunity!

One of the reasons why we don’t like to address an issue or a person who makes us uncomfortable, sometimes even miserable, is that in a very strange way, we enjoy feeling sad, pitying ourselves and presenting ourselves to the world as someone who’s been wronged. This is the first nail that keeps us pinned down. The second one deals with our discomfort in making the other person feel uncomfortable. When you take an issue head-on with someone, that person is going to most likely squirm. And you, being the good soul that you are, don’t want that person to feel like a worm. But unless you tell someone, who seems to take you for granted and so piles atrocity upon atrocity on you, that you don’t like being treated a certain way, how do you expect that person to respect you and treat you any differently? What you must understand is very simple. Don’t let anyone or anything affect your inner peace. The moment that is affected – do whatever it takes to protect it. And you don’t have to do much. Just speak your mind, draw your boundaries and set a clear protocol that you don’t appreciate any trespassing or over-stepping.

Ultimately, if someone pisses on you, or tramples all over you, you, more than that person, are responsible for the way you are feeling. So, if you don’t want to feel miserable, push back all those who don’t respect your peace and dignity. You don’t have to be rude. You just need to be firm – no matter who that person is – parent, child, sibling, neighbor, colleague, or boss. Have a brutally honest conversation. If you can’t do that, write that person an e-mail. Basically, communicate – efficiently, effectively and evocatively. Seek a closure, with such communication, to whatever bothers you about the issue or the person. When you do this, you will feel truly liberated and totally at peace with yourself!