When the Bad Guy Leaves the Room
Bad guys are perpetrators and instigators of harm. Sometimes they stand out like a black steak across the blue sky, instilling pervasive fear, and sometimes they hide behind trees, and you barely know they are there, until they push over one of those trees on top of you.
Responding to a bad guy is another end of the equation. In some ways, it is the more important end. A bad guy needs a victim. If we respond to a bad guy by cowering, or by standing up, the outcome will be different.
When we cower, we become an object of their control, and an expectation of interaction is put into play. We experience fear and confusion in the face of one attempting to assert their power over us. It is degrading and confusing to be controlled by another. It also encourages us to not accept responsibility for our lives. To do so could cause us more harm. Therefore, to cower, then, can become symbiotic and mutually satisfying, even in its pathology. For lack of a better term, it feels "safer" to cower.
If we stand up to the bad guy, challenge him (or her, but I'm using "him" for simplicity) and say NO to the controlling mechanisms which feed the fear, we become empowered in our strength and commitment to break free of the cycle of personal powerlessness (which has been instilled by fear). But within that, we also become endangered. The bad guy may become even badder. This uncertainty brings its own level of fear. As well, we are then out there on our own, now taking responsibility for all that we do without the role of victim hanging on our chests. This change in itself is a difficult shift - to go from being controlled to being in charge.
So, what if the bad guy gets rehabilitated?
What happens if our responses to being victimized aren't changed, but the bad guy himself changes?
What do we do with those responses which have, once again, been manipulated by the bad guy; this time for the better, but still not by our own doing?
What do we do with that sense of being bullied and that sense of powerlessness?
I assert this: we either become the bad guy or we make someone else the bad guy. We continue to live with the bad guy, because we've grown used to this way of life. But the bad guy now is hiding behind the trees within us, sabotaging and acting out negativity quietly, but surely, because that is what was always safest for us.
Until we empower ourselves to say NO to the bad guy, we will recreate this scenario over and over.
(to be continued...)
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