Revenge

“There are four basic human needs: food, sleep, sex, and revenge.”

– Banksy

We’re taught to believe failure is just a phase that comes before inevitable success. These are the stories we tell, and as the hero of our own story, any rejection we experience is just a precursor to acceptance. Failure motivates us to work harder and get better, knowing the victory that follows will be even sweeter.

But what if we don’t win? What if rejection only leads to more rejection? 

Imagine if you fail no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, for your whole life. You apply for thousands of jobs and never get an interview. You chase a dream for years and never come close. You ask out all kinds of people – people who seem to like you, who you just met, knew a long time, or saw on dating apps – and they all say no. You do your best and it’s not good enough.

You’re trapped behind a glass watching life happen to other people. You see them get jobs and promotions and married and remarried and happy. You see them right there, but you can’t join them and life doesn’t happen to you. Time passes and you bang on the glass trying to break through, but you can’t. You begin to panic. How is this your life? It hasn’t changed in thirty years, and though it’s unthinkable, you’re finally beginning to realize it never will. You feel helpless, worthless, unwanted. 

It’s how I feel almost all the time.

Depending on your disposition, there are two obvious responses to incessant rejection: one is giving up. You don’t want me? Guess I’ll die.* The other is revenge. 

I didn’t even want this stupid job, but I was willing to be a good little soldier, bend over, and take it like a whore. I put in the time, did what I was told to do, went into debt for my degree, and spent five to six years of minimum wage experience and you still respond with a form rejection email? Fine. If you won’t let me play in your reindeer games, I will burn them to the ground. I will be the Batman villain you want me to be. 

You don’t want to date me? You say I’m not good enough, but you’ll go out with certifiable scumbags because they drive a Porsche. You refuse to see my potential unless it’s already manifested in dollar signs, fine. I will become the man of your dreams. I will become wildly successful, rich, and famous until you say you’re sorry with mascara running down your face and beg me and I’ll look you in your eyes and say I do not want you. Show you how it feels. Go fuck yourself.

There’s a reason figures like Slim Shady and Andrew Tate are so popular among disillusioned, disenfranchised, unwanted young men. They are the archetypes of revenge, brutalizing women and becoming a complete menace to society.** I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. 

But this is animal pain lashing out from wounded ego. It is destructive energy, and I want to give in to it, but I know in my bones it is not the answer. 

In response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy when the whole nation was in pain, Leonard Bernstein wrote, “Sorrow and rage will not inflame us to see retribution; rather they will inflame our art. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Whenever we are hurt, we are pulled by our devils and angels to be either destructive or generative, to be either Jack Ruby or Leonard Bernstein. 

We can’t control whether we are accepted or rejected. Maybe we never get the job or the girl, and no amount of desire and effort can change that. But we can control our response. When we are told we are worthless, we can refuse to give up or give in. We can take our pain and create something of value out of it. This is alchemy, turning lead into gold, coal into diamonds. We take this offering and present it again with an open heart, and when we are told that isn’t good enough either, we take it back to our workshop to repair it and offer it again. And again until we die.

Bernstein said this will be our reply, but it will also be our revenge. 

J.

*See previous field note

**Women have an equally frustrating relationship with the opposite sex, from which they generate their own archetypes for revenge: the siren or the man-eater. 

July 16, 2024