We Almost Become Them

Click here to read without metaphors!

It’s easy to hate.

It’s easy to call it righteous.

It’s easy to look at the wreckage and think, I’ll never be like them, while clutching your own blade a little tighter.

Because anger feels clean. It makes the world simple again. There’s a strange comfort in fury — in naming villains, in pointing toward what’s wrong and feeling, for once, that you’re on the side of what’s right.

But I’ve learned that even righteous anger rots if you hold it too long. It starts whispering to you — softly, sweetly — telling you that harm can heal, that punishment can purify, that justice will come if you just hit back hard enough. And if you listen to it long enough, it stops feeling like anger at all. It starts feeling like purpose.

That’s how it gets you.

That’s how cruelty wears your face.

The truth is, I’ve wanted people to hurt. I’ve wanted them to feel what they’ve done. I’ve wanted the symmetry of suffering — the illusion that pain could balance pain. But every time I reached for that thought, something in me withered. It’s not guilt. Not weakness. Just recognition — that whatever we feed inside ourselves is what we become.

And what I was feeding wasn’t justice. It was decay dressed as resolve.

Because the longer you hold onto hate, the more it reshapes you. You start speaking in the language of your enemies, measuring morality in revenge, mistaking bitterness for clarity. You forget that healing is supposed to end pain, not multiply it. You stop asking what’s right, and start asking who deserves it.

That’s the quiet shift — when your principles stop being about protection and start being about punishment. When you start mistaking strength for hardness, compassion for weakness, peace for surrender. When you forget that integrity isn’t forged by destruction, but by restraint.

There's a monologue from Doctor Who that hit me hard a few years back:

"When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning -- sit down and talk! Listen to me, listen. I just -- I just want you to think. Do you know what thinking is? It's just a fancy word for changing your mind." (click here to see the full quote from Doctor Who)

That line has stayed with me for years — because it isn’t just about war. It’s about every time we raise our voices before we listen. Every time we lash out instead of pause. Every time we let our pain choose our target before our conscience can speak.

Hurt people hurt people — but they don’t have to.

Some hurt people heal people.

Some take what was done to them and refuse to pass it on.

Some break the chain with nothing but empty hands and trembling hearts and still say, It ends with me.

That’s not saintliness. That’s survival of the soul.

Because the truth is, healing isn’t pretty. It’s not peaceful meditation or poetic forgiveness. It’s brutal, lonely work. It’s sitting in a room with the parts of yourself you hate most — the jealous one, the angry one, the one that dreams of payback — and saying, I see you. I know why you’re here. But you don’t get to drive anymore.

It’s letting yourself feel every ounce of grief and rage without turning it outward. It’s screaming into the void without handing that scream to someone else to carry. It’s learning that peace doesn’t mean the pain goes away; it means you stop worshipping it.

And that’s the hardest part.

Because suffering wants to make disciples.

It wants to be spread, to be seen, to be justified.

It wants to convince you that your hurt makes you holy — that because you’ve been wronged, you’ve earned the right to harm.

But that’s the lie. That’s the temptation. That’s the seed of every cruelty that ever convinced itself it was compassion.

Healing asks something much harder: to sit down. To breathe. To think. To change your mind.

It asks you to hold the mirror steady when every part of you wants to look away. To see the reflection — bloodied, tired, imperfect — and say, I won’t destroy you for what you’ve done. But I won’t let you keep doing it, either.

That’s what healing really is: not erasing the darkness, but integrating it. Letting the monster inside you weep, so it doesn’t have to rage. Giving your pain a place to exist so it doesn’t have to consume.

The work of healing is quiet. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t get applause. It won’t make you feel victorious. But it will keep you human. And maybe that’s enough.

Because when the world teaches you that anger is power, choosing gentleness becomes an act of rebellion. When it rewards cruelty, compassion becomes defiance.

And maybe the real victory — the only one that matters — is not letting what broke you decide who you become.

🕊

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Continue the journey:

Click to read the next blog, "The Garden Within"

(From “The Practice of Being Human” — each piece builds on the last, one act of care at a time.)