A Word about Violence

Violence happens sometimes. Only fools go looking for it, imagining that they can’t be hurt or believing that they must ‘save’ their reputation (ego, their feelings about how they think other people see them).

Miss me with the idea that my reputation is worth defending or daydreams about being the main character. I’ve had as much violence as I care to, though I know more is coming.

I think the desire to commit violence to defend my reputation probably (mostly) died when I was 15, brand new learner’s permit letting me go to a party, where I broke up a fight. I ended up with a .45 pressed to my forehead, drily talking a dealer out of shooting me in public by arguing, puffing at a Marlboro, that I simply wasn’t worth the jail sentence and there were a lot of witnesses.

I’m fully good on the desire to defend myself from how people feel about me with violence. One of my roommates/fellow students once remarked that I was impossible to insult. It’s a lot harder to give a fuck about words when your ‘scale’ for understanding insults has that sort of experience on it.

I don’t get to abstain from violence, either. The thing about spiritual work is this: it’s messy. You’re meeting people where they are, and sometimes the place they are is violent.

There’s this strange (mostly white) idea that spirituality and spiritual work is all intention and nice thoughts and meditation on positive intentions. This poisonous idea comes coupled to the idea that bad things happen to bad people, as if anything that discomforts you is evil and as if you have the right to expect that you only experience the things you think are good.

Last year, papa showed up to several events with a black eye. The spirit tipped him into a glass table, shattering it and giving him a shiner. When asked, he mentioned that this incident, like many others I’ve seen him encounter, was in lieu of someone else being hurt for doing something stupid.

I will, on more occasions, mention love in this journal.

Sometimes, to right an imbalance, you meet people where they are—not judging them, simply existing in that space, willing to do whatever needs doing.

I’m not looking forward to it, but here we are.