It’s nice to be around pleasant people. But you don’t learn anything from them. It’s the difficult people who make you grow.
When you have an evil person who is intent on making your life miserable, you need to learn how to deal with your feelings without being dragged into the mud with them. . How do you handle that person without becoming just as petty, cruel and vindictive? It’s hard not to feel hatred for him. It feels like a personal assault and you don’t have any compassion for him. You want him to suffer. But that causes suffering for you because you’ll be carrying the toxic energy in your own heart. You’ll become him.
By seeing what’s really going on in his life, you will notice that he is already suffering. All kinds of bad things are happening to him because of the negative karma he’s creating. Every time he does something nasty to others, they do things to get revenge. He gets more and more paranoid because he knows people are out to get him. The pain leads him to be more angry.
If you know he’s hurting himself already, you don’t have to add to his suffering. I’m not suggesting you accept his bad behavior and make excuses for him or accept abuse. I think it’s important to stand up to him skillfully or avoid him. You see that he’s stuck in a losing position, but you can’t let his pain become your pain by being consumed by hatred for him. Goodwill just means hoping that he will be able to see how his negative behavior is harming himself and then him trying to make his life positive. We all have the potential for good and bad, Maybe he will eventually find his way out of his pain and no longer be destructive.
In a way this can be a great example for you on how not to be. Try to discover your attitudes and perceptions that may be making you just as negative at times. It’s easy enough to blame your self- induced suffering on others. Don’t run away from yourself or hate yourself. Learn to look at your situation with wisdom and patience.
Your part is to see the potential in him, just as in yourself. If he’s sincerely attempting to change for the better, your compassion will allow you to forget the harm he might have inflicted on you in the past, and show support.
There are so many examples of people who were monsters at certain times of their life because they were in a miserable marriage or job. They were stressed about school, money or health issues. They were just trying to survive without going off the deep end.
As humans we are born with the divine in us and lose that understanding as soon as we are socialized to believe that we are separate from it. So we need to remember that being content or joyful means our spirit is in tune and conversely, discordant when we are negative.
We are not a weed waiting to turn into a rose. We are already a flower waiting to bloom.
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