Go ahead, vanquish those who scorn you

Jul 16, 2009

IF one may play a bit loose with the words of Shakespeare (and I really don’t see why one may not, considering he played very loose with many words himself), one could call revenge the “red-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds upon.”

By Ernest Bazanye

IF one may play a bit loose with the words of Shakespeare (and I really don’t see why one may not, considering he played very loose with many words himself), one could call revenge the “red-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds upon.”

The old bard was talking about the way the person who is acting out his rage also suffers pain from this rage. You feed the anger that drives you and the anger that drives you, in turn, consumes you.

A lot of people will suggest that it is more convenient to just forgive and forget.

Those are people who don’t understand. When someone messes with you — an insult, a theft, a robbery, a malicious rumour, a bout of sex with your significant other — it is for the good of your whole life that you get the slimy rat.

The first major reason why you should exact your revenge is that the deed cannot be undone.

You are not the person you were before he began to tell everyone that when you were at school, you were close buddies with that guy who was recently named in Red Pepper as one of Kampala’s most proficient homosexuals. Forgiving and acting like nothing has happened will not restore your good name.

But locating him in a public place and punching him in a hard and very masculine way will help your reputation by reasserting to all who have began to form doubts that you are not a mincing nancy in any way or form. You are a real man.

The second reason is to deter impunity. Almost everyone in this world has a malicious streak in them.

It is the reason Jesus had to come down to save mankind, because you are all rotten bastards deep inside. If you get a chance to indulge your inner nastiness once, what is there to stop you doing it again and again?

The assurance of swift and certain retribution is there.
A sterling example comes in the borrowing of good books, DVDs, CDs and, of course, money.

There are many reprobates in Uganda who borrow these items and never return them.

Remember when Mark borrowed your Keri Hilson CD, the one you had shipped specially all the way from London, and then lent it to Sylvia, who gave it to her sister on campus, who scratched it?

You should tell Sylvia what Mark and her sister were doing in the back seat of his car the other weekend. That will teach him to never again distribute your music around as if he thinks he is the Internet.

The final and the greatest reason why payback beats letting it slide is that it feels good. To see your foes vanquished before you, to lay to waste those who scorned you, to leave them in smouldering ashes.

That rocks. So much so that sometimes I get bored and start looking for someone to piss me off just so that I can have a person to plot revenge against, knowing that when my vengeance is complete, I will get to enjoy that feeling of fulfillment.

For example, William Shakespeare was actually talking about jealousy in that Othello quote I referred to at the beginning. My teachers hated it when I misquoted my Shakespeare and I, in turn, hated most of my teachers.

And that is why, even to this day, when I am long out of school, I still get an incredible kick out of mangling his words.

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