We Almost Become Them (Plain Version)

It’s easy to hate.

It’s easy to call your hate justice.

It’s easy to see what others have destroyed and promise you’ll never be like them—while holding your own weapon in hand.

Anger feels clean. It makes the world simple. It makes you feel strong and right. But even justified anger can corrupt you if you hold onto it too long. It begins to whisper that harm can heal, that punishment can fix what’s broken, that hurting someone back will make things fair. If you listen long enough, that anger stops feeling like pain—it starts feeling like purpose.

That’s when cruelty takes your shape.

I’ve felt that temptation. I’ve wanted people to hurt, to feel what they caused, to see balance through suffering. But every time I reached for that idea, it hollowed me out. Because what I was feeding wasn’t justice—it was decay disguised as conviction.

Hate reshapes you. You start using the same logic and language as those you oppose. You confuse revenge for morality. You start believing that pain can purify, that strength means hardness, that compassion is weakness. You forget that integrity isn’t about destruction—it’s about restraint.

There’s a quote from Doctor Who that captures this:

"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."

That idea applies beyond war. It applies to every argument, every outburst, every moment when we act before thinking. Hurt people can keep spreading hurt—but they don’t have to. Some people take their pain and decide it ends with them.

That’s not sainthood. It’s survival of the soul.

Healing isn’t peaceful or pretty. It’s hard, lonely work. It’s sitting with the worst parts of yourself—the jealous part, the bitter part, the vengeful part—and saying, “I know you, but you don’t get to lead anymore.”

It means feeling your pain completely without passing it on. It means screaming privately instead of wounding someone else. It means understanding that peace doesn’t erase suffering—it just stops worshipping it.

Suffering wants followers. It wants to be justified and repeated. It wants to convince you that being hurt gives you permission to hurt others. That’s the trap. Every cruelty begins with the belief that your pain makes you pure.

Healing demands something harder: stopping. Thinking. Changing your mind.

It means holding up a mirror when you least want to, seeing yourself clearly, and saying, “I won’t destroy you—but I won’t let you keep destroying.” It means integrating the parts of you that could turn cruel, so they don’t have to.

Healing is quiet. It doesn’t look noble or heroic. It rarely feels good. But it keeps you human.

When the world glorifies anger, gentleness becomes rebellion. When the world rewards cruelty, compassion becomes resistance.

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

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About this series (Plain Version Series):

These versions are for anyone who wants the ideas without the poetry. They strip out the metaphor and figurative language so the message is clear and direct. Whether you find abstract writing hard to follow, prefer straightforward explanation, or are just having a rough day and don’t want the extra noise—this series gives you the same meaning, without the flourish.