Waging Peace

Crafty people confuse me. They confuse me with their words, their insults, their actions and their constant endeavour towards thinking and executing a misdeed that supercedes their earlier ones exponentially.

Psychology fascinates me and so I am currently involved in a small project to understand more about the psyche of a person whose main aim and occupation in life is to hurt people- emotionally.

There are many types- some do it with a brash on-your-face attitude, some do it with slick understated sentences, some really prepare hard for it and then strike at the perfect moment, and some are just plain geniuses- they excel at this craft like they always knew it.

So, why do some people like to hurt other people by their words? I like to call it the 'War of Words'. I say that because it is actually like a war that is being waged by one person on another unsuspecting person with the intention to win by emotionally insulting, bruising, hurting (= defeating) the opponent.

In my view people do this for several reasons- lack of confidence, lack of opportunities in their own lifetime (or atleast the belief that they had less opportunities), jealousy, more jealousy, addiction to sadistic pleasure, lack of control of their own lives and of those close to them, plain hatred for the opponent that can stem from one or several of the above with different degrees of permutations and combinations.

I've dealt with the brash ones and the understated ones at several times in my life. I deal with these people with patience because I truly feel that they are unfortunate souls. Unfortunate because they need someone else feeling bad to feel good about themselves. That, I feel is a very pitiable situation to be in. Imagine not having anything in yourself or around you to make you happy and imagine being in a constant state of heightened high-pitched hatred for someone...the thought itself tires me out.

That is the reason why I am patient while dealing with such people. You talk to them, try to counsel them, and generally make them realize that there are indeed things in them and around them that can give them some pleasure and satisfaction that this new feeling can be perhaps a different experience than the sadistic pleasure that they have so gotten used to; and this works a lot of times...At least the now seemingly sober war experts eliminate me as their opponent!

But how does one deal with the really seasoned players for whom this genre of war is a passion- they love it and excel at it. This is still a question for me and I am delving deeper into many a psyche to discover the truth. I shall surely post it up on my blog (if and) when I find the answer.

Till then, I am going to continue waging peace...war of words is not fun.