An acquaintance of mine dropped in and started talking about her bitter divorce. It wasn’t a nice story. The emotional and physical abuse suffered, not just at the hands of her Ex but his entire family sounded terrifying, like monsters had wrecked a human toy. Unbelievably tragic and sadly true.
add_main_imageWhenever I hear of these gory divorce stories I do realise how fortunate I am. Even at the worst of times, I don’t think the Ex and I did anything to each other that could put us in jail. Just like that frank declaration, which comes in certain movies, ‘No animals or human beings were harmed during the making of our divorce’.
This acquaintance then confessed that though it has been two years since her divorce she still dreams of taking ‘revenge’ against the whole bunch of them. Making them suffer as they made her suffer. Her dreams were the stuff of Bollywood plots, twisted and over dramatic. I was a bit surprised for her pain sounded so fresh and raw. It must have been festering all this time and not dying the natural death that pain should.NextMAds
At this point I wanted to hold her shoulders and shake out all that negativity in her, but being sweet, understanding and naturally compassionate, I didn’t. Instead, I listened as one delicious revenge plot after another tumbled out of her still raging mind. At the end of that exhaustive list of tortures she had planned for the Ex’s family, she asked with a wicked glint in her eye, which one did I think was the best.
That’s when I launched some missiles of my own. Without soft pedalling, I told her quite frankly that she was an idiot. Not for wanting revenge, no, that was human. She was an imbecile for thinking of conventional ways of getting back at the people who had caused her so much harm.
The best kind of revenge to take on someone who has hurt you, stolen years of your life and shattered your belief in anything good is to be incredibly happy. As she blinked back her surprised tears, I explained further.
If she could begin by being this whirlwind of joy and start living a positive, fulfilled successful life, that was all her Ex and her Ex in-laws needed to feel pissed off. They’d hate the fact that someone who they thought unworthy was doing such a fabulous job in this world, in the business of living.
If she could find meaning in her life that didn’t involve them, it would point out how irrelevant their existence was to her.
If she accepted the world and celebrated its many-splendored joys, it would show them the value of something they rejected.sixthMAds
Even if they didn’t ‘see’ how wonderfully she was getting on by the ejection of them from her life, it wouldn’t matter. The annoying, giddy-headed, trippy truth is that when you’re happy, there’s really no time to plot and plan the unhappiness of someone else.
Yes, the best kind of revenge is the one you don’t take.
Dancing Divorcee is a weekly happy, sad, funny, obnoxious blog on the misadventure called divorce. It will appear every Thursday. Arathi Menon is a dancing divorcee who also blogs, writes, tweets and repairs brands.
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