Paint Balling Bullies
Do you know that scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie punches the living daylights out of the bully Scott Fargus, the kid with the yellow teeth? Do you secretly cheer him on, as Ray and I do?
I suspect that all of us have a Scott Fargus or two in our lives who have bullied us for so long that we fear if we ever fought back we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves from beating the crap out of them. Maybe the kid with the yellow teeth is a real person, such as Pope Benedict XVI, James Dobson, or Rush Limbaugh, or maybe the bully is more generic, like the person who talks on a cell phone in the restaurant, bathroom, or movie theater, or the person who lets their dog poop on the sidewalk and doesn’t clean it up, or the person who ignores the “Merge” signs and cuts into traffic at the last minute. You don’t speak up. You seethe in quiet. And then one person goes too far once too often and pow! Pow! Pow!
I dream about it, and I cheer quietly when Ralphie bloodies Scott’s nose, but I know that it’s not the person I want to be. I don’t want to bloody the Pope’s nose. I just wish he would quit being such a bully.
But what about shooting him with a paint ball gun? Like Denny Crane in the TV show Boston Legal, wouldn’t it be fun to carry around a gun filled with chartreuse (that’s yellow green for our lesbian and straight male readers) cartridges and to fire away at the car with the open windows and the rap music blaring through the neighborhood, or the people who treat waiters and grocery clerks as if they were less than human, or the preachers who use the Bible to justify their bigotry? Splat! Splat! Splat!
If I had such a gun, I would use it way too often. That’s why I don’t have a paint ball gun or any other weapon. I would do harm to others and that’s not the person I want to be.
Sometimes, in fact more often than I’d like, I don’t use my fists or a gun to give bullies their due. I use my tongue and my computer instead. Stirring the pot so that others come to hate my enemies can be far more lethal than bloodying their nose or covering them with paint. And while it generally feels good when I get in my licks, I don’t usually feel very good about myself later because it’s not the person I want to be.
I don’t want to be a person who creates or exacerbates divisions. I want to be a person who helps build bridges and heals wounds. I don’t want to die feeling that I beat an enemy. I want to die knowing that I left this world a more loving and peaceful place than it was when I entered it.
My reading in the Tao te Ching yesterday was:
“Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn’t try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon itself.
“The Master does his job and then stops. He understands that the Universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao. Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need other’s approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.”
That’s the man I want to be. My resolution for 2009 is to focus more attention, time, and energy on being a man of peace.
