Becoming evil
But that’s not what we are
by Mike Meyer
Listen to me carefully. I’m going to tell you about what happens to people when they become evil. Not horrendously evil but a little bad that becomes a slow and incremental evil. The kind of bad that all of us become occasionally if we don’t learn to stop ourselves in time.
But that’s the problem, there are times when you just can’t stop. As if the normal resistance to doing something you know you will regret simply disappears. As if reaching for a guard rail that you know is there suddenly disappears and you slide right through into something that is not you.
If your lucky and careful, you need to work to learn the carefulness, if you maintain the first and try for the second it might not be too bad. But there is a price for everything and you have to be willing to pay it from the start.
That means you’ve hurt someone by mocking them when they have offered you a small glimpse of themselves; or made someone angry or frightened because of some anger in you unrelated to them; or didn’t stop a person you cared for from doing something that was mean and stupid and you both knew it. These are the small, fleeting bad things that do small damage, you hope. But you need to know they will not go away and that is your payment.
As you age you find they stay clearly in your memory like a small scar or a dead spot where the feeling is lost. It’s not a pain but the absence of any good feeling in that place. It’s not big enough to haunt you but it stays where you may stumble on it at odd times. An unfriendly pause. A random thought,a bit of memory. These cannot be removed and as you age they cluster with natural pains and weaknesses and add a little to the weight that you carry. And you gradually become slower and weaker so the weight gets heavier even if you do nothing to add to it.
There are more complicated bad things that are bigger but grayer. Breaking up with someone who was really committed whether love, or pride, or need of some kind but whatever it was you couldn’t provide it.
Years together and you find yourself checking the scale almost daily to see if the unhappiness is heavier than the happiness. No, but it’s close. You need to watch so you don’t put your finger on the scale to force it down when you should want it to go up to happiness. And by thinking that you’re pushing it down on the wrong side.
The grayness comes from trying to see the other side. If both can’t provide or find happiness then when do you quit? But other things intrude and you go on. Good or bad? Someone who has been an accidental lover but not really, another little lie, and suddenly they come to you with tragedy but you have your obligations, children, family. And they know that, too, and it’s ok but it’s not. And it would be better if you knew they hated you but you never know. You never hear from them again and years later you hear that they are gone. Did they find the happiness you couldn’t give? Or were you the weight they couldn’t carry?
You make mistakes and make the best choice you can. Sometimes the rules allow only bad options and you try to make the most of those. But, later, you realize that you didn’t even try to break the rules. Those bad rules were your excuse.
These are bad things that build in us all. They are lessons you need to learn so you can avoid that one mistake again. You will do other small bad things but you really need to not repeat them. If you keep making the same mistakes, the second time it’s different. The third and fourth it changes again.
You can always stop and try to make up for it but you have to admit all of the instances of that bad thing. Each one needs to thought of and a mental payment made. If you don’t, each time again it’s different and the weight becomes exponential.
If you’re young and strong and busy you can keep pushing through. But there’s a big risk. You may start not just lying by ignoring it but lying to yourself and others, too. It wasn’t your fault and it was really no big thing any of those times you caused the same kind of hurt. But it becomes big enough you have to cover it with lies. And you need other’s lies to help.
When you start lying to others to protect the lies you’ve told yourself you become evil. You are there and you can’t admit it. You didn’t mean to become evil and people who know you know that. But they may be using you to cover their own lies and their transition to evil. They’re dependent and your dependent and you’re both weak.
Then you may learn how to work together and the evil becomes an asset that you can use to become strong again. You’ve become good at lying to yourself and those are the lies you use with others, too. Truth doesn’t matter and you’ve proven that. Power is success and power is controlling the reality that people see. And only special people can see you really but if you can control them then you’re stronger.
These are the small bad things we can’t avoid but need to learn to face within ourselves. And how they become large, but never too large to us, because our lies are needed and we use both our own and other’s lies. But you can’t see how large the evil is because that’s what you have become.
We have a part of America’s population that has become evil. But if we lie about them being evil to ourselves then we become evil, too. And they will destroy us. They will say that the lies are not really lies because we need the lies to hide because the evil is not us but someone else who must be lying about not needing lies. They’re the problem. They must be lying.
There will be a reckoning. This is a type of insanity. Either you face all those who have become evil or someone else will need to remove the disease that you have become. There is a choice but only one way to stop the lies.
Do we still have the strength?
