VIOLENCE AND SELF CONTROL

Being involved with family violence control puts me in an odd situation.

I have avoided physical fighting my whole life. Childhood became the most significant influence on this. My father had told me, and I took it as holy law, that you as a guy, do not strike women. I cannot say that my older sisters and I did not have shoving matches, but for me that would have been self defense. Our family dynamics was heavy on the mental sparing which can seem actually more devastating.

The physical violence in our house was later done, after my mothers death, by a step mother-guardian. She would not hesitate to hit, throw objects and threaten with knives. She sent my father to the hospital with a big gash across his forehead. I slept with the largest kitchen knife under my pillow as a self defense plan for a knife attack while I was asleep. She had hit me in the face while I was asleep, then locked me out in the snow in my pajamas. My father committed suicide not long after that.

Earlier I had incidences when someone seemed to be threatening my life as a freshman high school. I was literally about 100 lbs. and someone morbidly obese around 500 lbs, held me under water to near drowning during pool time in a crowded pool. He had done this more than once. It became so serious to me (swallowing-inhaling watter) that I thought I would have to take matters into my own hands. One more time, and I was going to put him in a headlock with my legs around his neck and hold him under until it meant something. I was a totally inhibited kid and did not trust authority to do anything but blame the victim. So I had to weigh in my mind, possibly causing someones death and being called and treated as a murderer.

As it turned out, he never did that again. But I was sure it would have been me to blame and I would have felt I had no options in my own self defense. No one seemed to notice him doing this during the pool commotion, so I believed no one would accept my story. It just never came through to experience. In physical confrontations during boyhood, I found I had to keep the potential for rage out of me, especially since I had no doubt that I would take down someone twice my size. It took someone quite a bit larger and older to overcome me. I was afraid of my rage and how if unleashed it would seem out of my control.

(As evidence that I am not just delusional about this strength proclamation. When it rained a lot during physical education, outdoor activities were called off and we were put into the gym, we freshmen and the sophomores, to have a thing called “bombardment”. This is where there are two sides chosen, a line across the middle of the gym, where the two sides throw rubber balls a little smaller than a soccer ball at each other. Out of about 150 students divided in two, little me was one of the last picked, last or second to last.

Well the first game I discovered that being in the lower 10% in size had me a bit afraid, so I hung back as many did. All it took was the guy next to you ducking and a ball out of nowhere taking you out, while leaving a big red mark somewhere. I decided to risk all and take it to the line next game.

You could see most of what was being thrown up front. I found out I could catch any-ones ball thrown at me, but no-one could hold onto mine. I was also very accurate. I won that game. The last guy standing. I was picked second of all players next game. The team first picking, picked his seeming best friend first, so I was first on the other team picked. The next game was the last. It oddly ended up being me the last standing on my team, and a very out of shape guy hiding and dodging in the corner on the other side when the period ran out. I could no longer throw fast enough to eliminate time for him to move. That is how little old me was as a skinny five feet two.)

TRUTH VS ADVICE

What I just said I cannot say to someone involved in family violence. As far as physical violence goes, I do not hit women. I have told ones who gave me any actual physical provocation that, “If you do that again, we are over!” I do not tolerate fighting, especially in the home relationships. I try to avoid physical confrontations with anyone. Now that I am a “senior citizen” I find you are not seen as a threat overall, or there is a kind of automatic respect. Most of that sense of being on guard is much diminished now. I take peace as my way and it path is most often open.

I have found that emotional abuse has prove a bit more difficult to not take part in, compared to a sense of law that one just never does such a thing. I grew up that way, making fun of someones mistake or being ridiculed. It is then a model of behavior I have had to contain and reverse. To do that requires a will and an understanding of the Golden Rule or Categorical Imperative. I need to establish the sense that not only does “what goes around comes around.”, but it is already damaging my life. Abusing others in any way is profoundly self abuse.

I need to see (learn to recognize) when I am treating another like I would not wish to be treated, and immediately review what my self respect or control problem really is. We are often given the information from another that we are on some kind of attack and they becoming defensive, or initiating their own retaliations.

Still, when expressing guidance to someone, it will often fall flat if it is preached or describes as something I am so above, and can’t understand how someone could do such a thing. That fits as a key with very few dysfunctional programs. I have to speak out of and through my own life, the love in your heart has to be in it, to be a gift expected to have a chance at being received.

PROGRESSIVE OR REACTIONARY

In some ways I have described political tactics and ways of manipulation. All manipulation is in some way an abuse of the truth. Its vibrational disturbance will not go unnoticed, except perhaps, by like minded dysfunction. The same situations and rationalizations that come to effect home life are used in the greater life of our world. Even if everyone does it, doesn’t make it right.

We will find manipulative arguments covered if various guises meant to hide their intention, and instead, be represented as your own interest. Fear and insecurity are great hiding places for manipulative interest. Optimistic vision can also be used as a trick to catch someones interest, then later prove to have been a ruse. We need to be both critically minded on the one hand, and have our heart held out open in the other. True adults can do this.

The upcoming election seems to be being based on fear and insecurity vs. hope and optimism, both of these being held as paramount in differing ways by the candidates. I am not saying that we are not justified in having these inclinations. What I am encouraging is the “true believers” and the doubtful to have their wits about them. As citizens and voters, it is up to us to determine the fact from fiction, the hidden agendas from the promises of safety and security. For power will seek to inject its corruptions into all areas of life if let be.

We each are freedom, love, and truths best and last hopes. Better to stand with understanding under their tall light, than the ignorance that festers in the shadows of misunderstanding.