Deep pain

 As we have discussed, unjust hurts or pains. Some of these unjust pains leave the marks of deep hurts that require forgiveness to heal. Deep hurt is something that penetrates your soul and shakes you like a milkshake, turning life upside down. Deep hurt is offensive and makes us sick. Smedes (1984) pointed out 3, with which I also agree.

A) DISLOYALITY

When a relationship is being shared, we vow to each other to keep the promise of being loyal to each other. This is the building block of every relationship: trust. When this trust is broken, it pierces like a dagger into our souls, causing us to feel a crush that is beyond bearance. 

As I was discussing this issue and analysing the various situations I have faced with disloyality, two perspectives came to mind. One in which I am disloyal and hurt others, and the other in which someone else was disloyal with me. I never thought of this in this manner before. This insightful perspective helped me gain emotional intelligence. 

My heart was full of anger and aguish when people treated me badly in my unit for showing them the cheating they were doing. This was only my perspective when I felt the hurt of mistreatment. But if I put myself in the place of Madam X, whose mistake I highlighted, "What must she have felt at that moment?" Obviously, it was cheating, a breach of trust, and a direct attack on her loyalty to the institute. She had put so many years of practice into the institute, and within seconds, I had shattered it to dust on the earth. "Doesn't this show disloyality towards her?" This idea completely transformed my outlook on life. I was so angry at them for treating me badly, and I never felt that they felt the same about my action. 

This is the reason we need to develop emotional intelligence in order to wisely interact and present things for the betterment of everyone. It is not always the question of doing things rightly; many times it is rightly presenting your findings without demoralising and dehumanising the other person. At that time, I felt being right was only important. Now, after 20 years of pondering over the issue, I realise there was a better way to present that crisis situation without harming the status of Madam X and also not causing the loss of my institute (a discrepancy in the balance sheet, which I found). Today, I feel like what they all did was because they saw me as a disloyal person rather than a saviour who wanted to correct the accounts and safeguard future money discrepancies. In my eyes, I wanted to do good, but in their eyes, I only attacked their ego and prestige. That is why this pain was unbearable. 

B) BETRAYAL

Another similar concept is cheating on someone. It is a step further in disloyality, where we sell the information for a few bucks. Betrayal is like the pus, which is not visible but is eating the healthy tissue within and spoiling everything. Disloyality only creates a wound, but betrayal means getting infected and decaying. This is serious and severe. We need to attend to this immediately.

I was reminded of an incident. I asked my trusted helper, Gulab, to book my luggage in GATI. He went and did it. The bill was brought to me. I asked him, "Is this bill true?" and he said yes. I paid the whole amount, and I left that unit. After months of putting up a claim, I realised that my helper had lied to me. This shattered me completely. This incident had broken me completely. More than the disloyality my servant showed, it was the betrayal, i.e., overcrossing me and supporting the luggage broker, that crushed me. This helper had never done this with me. I was like, How? Why? Inside, I felt like, "Why did the helper choose the broker over me? Did I ever treat him wrongly, or was I wrong in analysing people and trusting them?" I was filled with sadness, and I never wanted to trust anyone but myself. 

C) BRUTALITY

This is the most heinous of all. It is about great cruelty. Brutality is something that takes everything you call your own, leaving you empty and bankrupt. Whenever I come across this word, I am reminded of nurse Aruna Shanbaug. His case left me awe-struck. Aruna did nothing wrong; she just expressed her unwillingness, for which she has to suffer for her whole life. A similar incidence touched my heart: that of Laxmi Agarwal, a 15-year-old kid who expressed her unwillingness for a relationship with a 32-year-old man, for which she was attacked with an acid. She faced multiple burns, and her face was completely ruined. Ugliness is something we all never want, but for Laxmi, this became her fate hereafter. A small bully or a comment on a pimple makes us feel so much in adolescence. How much mental pain and struggle Laxmi is fighting each day with herself and for herself. Laxmi was strong enough to fight the evils of brutality and act as a role model for other victims of brutality, but Aruna had no other option but to see everything with her own eyes and say nothing. She became a vegetable-like being, bearing the consequences of someone else's unsatisfied ego and lust. Laxmi forgave and took the cause to bring about a change in society and make it a safer place for girls, while Aruna never had a chance to forgive and come over it. 

Such things really require self-healing, and for this, we need a magical wand of forgiveness. There is no other move but forgiveness. 

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