The Best Revenge is Good Living (Them Damned Yankees…)

It’s easy to hate. It’s easy to get angry. And occasionally, in the right context, it can be a little fun. But at the end of the day, nothing works as well as letting go and living well…

Here’s a simple sports fact: when your team loses you really want to hate the other team and all the players on it. You want to boo, make fun, taunt, and find even the tiniest little bit of info you can use to rip apart the people that had the audacity to deny your team the victory it so justly deserved.

(I’m not saying his attitude is correct or noble; we should all absolutely let go of these types of thoughts. But hey, they still happen)

Some players make it easy for us to mock and hate them. They live stupidly, give flame-inducing interviews, or simply break the law. Others, however, seem to brush it off and realize that simple good living is the best course of action.

The Yankees defeated the Phillies in the World Series this week. I wanted the Phillies to win, and when they lost, I certainly wanted to boo the “evil empire” that is the NY Yankees.

Then someone forwarded me a story about Joe Girardi, the manager of the Yankees, pulling over on the Cross County Parkway to help a woman who had been in a car crash. Astonishingly, this occurred just a few hours after he had won the World Series!

The report also says that he was the first to arrive on the scene and crossed three lanes of traffic to help. A few scant hours after one of, if not the, biggest events in his personal and professional life. At 2:45 in the morning! He stops to help someone out.

How do you muster any disdain for a person like that?

*sigh*

You can’t. And that’s why good living is the best course of action.

Fighting Fire With Fire Can Get You Burned

When someone wrongs you, is your first response to wrong them back? Argue back, insult them, talk behind their back, sabotage their career, or something worse? Do you follow through? Many people do, and feel justified because they were wronged first.

Usually that course of action fails because it does three things:

1. It escalates the situation – Think your retort or brilliant will end the situation? Think again. Chances are no matter how right you think you are, no matter how brilliant your counter, no matter how clever your plan, chances are that you actions will only make the other party more mad and the situation will get worse.
2. It gives them justification for why they were right in the first place – People have very limited vision. If you do something to them, that’s all they will focus on. They will ignore the countless times before that they wronged you. And now they will feel justified in anything they do.
3. It makes you wrong – In the eyes of the other person; in the eyes of other people; in the eyes of the law. If you lash back you become wrong. You must concede the high ground, and are now trapped in a uselessly futile situation.

No, the best course of action, even when wronged, is to go on and live such a good awesome life that people find it hard to muster any kind of disdain for you. You may miss out on some of the short term gain of hurting someone else, but in the long run, it’s the only strategy that really works.

If a Yankees manager can make it hard for Phillies fans to hate him the day after the world series, why can’t you do the same. Make it hard for your enemies to hate you. Live a good life and leave the hate to the haters.