Love, Revenge and Justice

Over the past few days I have been thinking. This itself should suffice as a breaking news bulletin. However, this time the thinking managed to yield a little something useful, at least for myself. It all began with a rather lengthy conversation with a very good friend. It was an exercise in "freeing up" some space in mind's hard disk so to speak. Cutting the chase, it was about a certain issue both of us have been facing since a few months now. Although the particulars differ, the bottom line is same, its about experiences of riding emotional roller coasters. A common theme soon appeared, and that was mainly around three things - love, revenge, memory. Following is simply a screen dump of the toxic waste this created in my cerebral cavity, just free flowing thoughts resulting from that conversation. This friend I mentioned suffered from a major heart break that is stopping her from moving on in life. This followed what she prefers calling as injustice by a certain selfish individual who struck her life like a lightening, only to have left a few years later leaving behind significant damage. This led her to believe that love is fake, revenge is justified and memory (and a good memory at that) is not always a gift. This is what I have been thinking about.

Firstly, I am still not entirely sure what this thing love is all about. Of course I understand the classification, definitions, implications and consequences. Nonetheless, the thing I don't quite grasp is its relevance. Is every human being capable of love, at least in the sense this emotion is understood by the masses? Is it ever possible to love but not love at the same time? Is love possible without attachment? If there is no attachment, can it be called love? Is love minus attachment just as credible? I don't mean commitment, faithfulness, loyalty, etc as is the case in a romantic relationship...those things are paramount. The only problem I have is with attachment. Maybe this is total nonsense. But something inside me makes me feel it may just work if done the right way.

Second point on agenda was revenge. This friend of mine now seeks revenge, but her idea of revenge is pretty unusual from what I have been exposed to so far. She has a very elaborate plan of wreaking havoc in this person's life, systematically, steadily, one step at a time, in a way that the memory of this wrong doing never fades from his mind. I feel somewhat ashamed that the primary advice she wanted from me was whether the plan would work and if I could suggest any improvements to cause even more damage. Regardless, having taken an indifferent stance in this matter, I feel better about myself now. This made me think about the nature of revenge. I remember reading many years ago a quote by Sir Francis Bacon - "Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out". It has only started to make sense now. However, is revenge always by definition wrong? Or are there acceptable forms of revenge? I have come to understand over time that its not really what we do but our intentions behind doing it that matter. Looking at it from this perspective, could revenge taken only with an intention to establish justice and bring someone who has a habit to do injustice to account be considered acceptable? Well one argument may well be that this is not revenge any more then because there is no personal satisfaction involved. However, is it worth all the time and energy spent to achieve it?

As for the third point, well I've written enough to continue with that. It was quite insignificant compared to these two heavy weights so I'll just leave it for now.

*In case anyone is wondering what's that picture doing up there...it is meant to be suggestive. It is a photograph of different patterns created by smoke. Just a subtle innuendo that maybe smoke isn't always bad, perhaps it too has beauty of its own :)