"Give your tormentors so much sweetness that they develop diabetes. To a girl in her early teens, that sounded like nonsense. I was the centre of the universe. Surely, no one had ever been as badly treated as I was! And here my father was, telling me to be nice to them? I would ask: Is this some turn-the-other-cheek rubbish? My father has quite a distinctive cackle, and I heard it in those moments."
"For a while, I relished the confused looks I would receive whenever I used this tactic. But as I got older, I realised it wasn't a tactic at all. Through the stinging barbs and deep pain we all sometimes have to face, being exceedingly nice to those who tormented me became a pathway to peace. I gradually shed my unfortunate habit of keeping an emotional ledger, of believing that every wrong, real or perceived, HAD to be addressed and resolved for me to move on."
A young teenager endured taunts about weight, body changes, and a home perm and reported every insult to parents. The mother urged retaliation, while the father advised overwhelming tormentors with kindness. The initial tactic produced confused reactions and proved effective. With age, the approach ceased to feel like a tactic and became a pathway to peace through giving extraordinary niceness to tormentors. The narrator abandoned the habit of keeping an emotional ledger and the compulsion to address every perceived wrong. Granting grace removed corrosive angst about balancing wrongs, though forgiveness is not always possible and sometimes one must fight.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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