Revenge

My Father taught me a lesson about revenge that has lasted me a lifetime.  He never knew how valuable it was going to be.  I was 18 years old and I had just been dumped by my first serious girlfriend. The relationship had started to become rocky, and I was too young and too stupid to know what was coming.  One night, on a hunch, I discovered her in the backseat of another man's car.  There was a scene, which only served to make me more angry and depressed.  I was crushed.  I was furious.  My blood was full of rage.  My confusion kept me from knowing whether I was sad or angry.  The next day I was still confused.  I told my parents what had happened.  While they tried to console me, nothing really helped.  

I can only remember a handful of times when my father talked intimately with me.  My mother kept me so close to her, that I don’t think I ever really knew my father.  She didn’t leave room for him to connect with me.  On this day, however, he came up to me and asked me to walk with him.  He put his arm around me and told me a story.  It was one of the three or four occassions in which my father spoke to me one man to another.  I will never forget it.

“You know that I was married before?”

“Sure.”  I knew my half brother Norman was from a previous marriage. 

“What you don’t know is how that relationship ended.  I came home early from work one night, and I found my wife in bed with another man.  I was furious.  I did what I thought I should do and I came back up to the farm to get the shotgun.  It was a double barrled shot gun and I figured one barrel for each of them.  I was loading it up, when my father walked in, your Grandfather.  He looked at me and asked me what I thought I was doing, and I told him.  I’ll never forget what he said next, put that gun away, you are worth more than either of them.”   

After telling me this, he looked me directly in the eye and said, "The same goes for you, your worth more than both of them combined.  Don’t you forget it."  He said no more and walked away. This was my father's lesson on revenge.  

He never knew how important and ironic it was that this was one of the few lessons he gave me.  Six years later, when my mother was murdered, my soul cried for revenge.  However, my father’s words kept coming back to me.  Eventually, I was able to find peace.  I turned my desire for revenge over to the universe, believing in Karma and knowing that the Gods punish much better than I ever would.  Besides, I was worth more than that.