It was only a few days ago that I read the news that Gadhafi, the former leader of Libya was killed.
As I read through the news report, there were many quotes of celebration and happiness of taking down a brutal man who killed many and hurt many more.
I do not disagree with the atrocities that he committed.
But as I read the jubilant quotes and words of joy of those who came to celebrate his death and his dead body paraded through the streets of Libya, I fear that something in humanity has been lost.
I am unsure how cruelty of any kind justifies anyone's behavior no matter what has been committed, because the moment you take a weapon to take out the person who is holding the weapon you become that person.
No matter whether you want to call is freedom fighting, justice, call from 'God', self-protection; you become the other person, even for a moment.
You become a person who desires the destruction of life of another being! Though unfortunately the frequency of these situations have increased manifold over the last few decades, these are extreme situations nevertheless.
But there are other situations in our daily living that we exhibit similar desires, a need for revenge and destruction.
Let's take a normal household conflict with a loved one; a work situation with a colleague, a fall out with a friend.
If someone hurts us or any of our loved ones with an unkind word or action, what do we do? Do we retaliate? Do we show the other person what we are made out of? How much gas we have in our tank to take on the battle? We may be fighting Gadhafi's in our day-to-day life in many ways than we acknowledge or we wish to acknowledge.
These conflicts may not be that cruel, deadly and vicious but they set in motion the same emotions like anger, frustration, a need to take revenge, envy, greed for what the other person has and what we would like to see them lose, hate, a need to establish our sense of self over them.
Whatever the case maybe, we engage in lesser or larger conflicts on a day to day basis in the same fashion and we want to 'WIN' and we want the other person to 'LOSE'.
If that loss can be publicly displayed then we get more satisfaction out of it.
Now most of us will probably not acknowledge this about ourselves.
But when someone we don't like gets into trouble or face the music so to speak, we would probably say things like, "well, they deserved it", or "they had that coming", "that was bad karma", but feel in our hearts whether there wasn't even the slightest of sneers, a "damn good for you" feeling going on.
What do these negative emotions do to you? Of course without our own knowing we may resort to negative words and actions based on our negative emotions.
If we hold hate, anger, envy in our hearts we will talk to the other person with words that would hurt their feelings.
We will find opportunities to put them down.
Worse is if we put these things to action.
When anger, hatred matures, it shows in behavior.
We could decide to ignore the people we hate, not to talk to them or to exclude them from what we do because we despise them so much.
We could do unkind acts, ungenerous acts, and even go to the extent of shooting them down.
Gadhafi's life shows both sides of the coin.
He resorted to hating and in return he was hated.
He resorted to killing and he was finally killed.
It teaches a great lesson for all.
The lesson is that we cannot find release by hurting the other.
By doing so, we end up hurting ourselves.
So, the point is when we seek justice of any kind in acts of revenge that inherently tends to corrupt us in return.
It's like putting your hand into a pile of shit, to squash a bunch of maggots.
You are going to stink for sure and probably a parasite from the pile of shit will get under your skin and infest you with a disease too.
Negative emotions we direct upon others are the same.
It's like putting your hand into a pile of shit.
We get infested with anger, hatred and all the negativities we tried to crush in the first place.
Then that's what gets spurted out from us as long as we live.
People get mentally and physically sick and do weird things because they have been bitten by the parasites called anger, hatred, envy and they display symptoms like depression, mental deterioration, unhappiness, agitation, restlessness and do things like mass murders, cruelties to people and even loved ones.
This is the reason, I believe, the great spiritual leaders of the world consistently said to all of us to forgive one another.
Because in forgiving and not hating there is peace to be found.
There is a healing that takes place.
Forgiveness does not mean that one simply surrenders to cruelties and people can shoot you down as they wish.
Of course you bring people to justice.
But that does not mean resorting to killing and hurting and hating and violence because in the wake of such cruelties healing can be prolonged and if not take additional blood shedding.
Well, all so easy for someone enlightened to say and do but for us so very hard to do.
Metaphorically we will all want the other person to put down the gun first, just in case.
This fear and the need to assert oneself is the greatest enemy for peace and harmony.
But unfortunately this is not the nature of things.
The nature of things is to live in harmony and what does not, is eradicated by evolution itself since it loses its ability to sustain itself in the long run.
In many ways, we humans, who have the ability think beyond any other being in this planet, have chosen to destroy one another giving in to our limited and destructive emotions.
In that we have chosen to go against the very nature that has created us.
Amongst the jubilations and celebrations, what I felt was being lost, was the continuity of humanity.