Human beings are interesting. We hold ourselves back because we put ourselves in the shoes of others and imagine what it would be like to suffer the way they would. And yet, almost everything in this world can be obtained by ignoring that impulse. By abandoning empathy. And all the while holding back, I suffer myself anyway. I don’t have much courage to be evil, but I’m right there along the border, on the other side of veil, waiting for the thing that convinces me to abandon all care and finally cross over.
I daydream about what I’d do to people who say things about me that I don’t like. I daydream about getting off at the same bus stop as someone else and following them until an opportune moment presents itself. Daydream of revenge and of satisfaction. It’s all there. It always has been. I’ve just been ignoring it because prison sucks and I hope too much that people aren’t as shitty as I all too often perceive.
I can feel the membrane of the barrier. I just haven’t decided to plunge-in beyond it yet.
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If there’s perhaps one thing I’ve sort of learned over the years, it’s that it’s never worth crossing such boundaries. Unless you’re a psychopath, when the adrenaline rush wears off you’ll be left reckoning with whatever it is you’ve done, feeling worse about yourself. No matter how good it may feel in the moment, it will fade. It’s an utterly empty high. There’s no lasting satisfaction, no peace, no real sense of wellbeing. Just a rush, followed by regret. Why mess up the lives of others for that? Why make things even harder for yourself? It’s not worth it. But maybe you can only truly realise that once you’re on the other side, and there’s no way back.
I like that we can self reflect like that, choose to not act on those things.
I watched a wrestling documentary recently and they make a good point.
People like to see Stone Cold Steve Austin beat up Vince McMahon because a lot of people take a lot a shit irl from their own bosses and sometimes want to beat the s
*shit out of them. It’s cool that we have that kind of reasoning skill to think of these scenarios and choose what to act on or not from there.