If Evil Can Persist, So Can I

In my previous post a little over a week ago I asked why it seems as though evil has a farther reach than good. I’ve continued to ponder that idea, and I gained some insight last night. Evil people get their way, because they persist and pivot and are relentless until they either get their way or are forced out of the equation. And once they are forced out of that equation, they channel their rage into finding or creating another equation to force themselves into. They are never truly done terrorizing society unless they are dead or decide to change their ways.

I’ll use my own work experience as an example. In one job I had a manager who had it out for me thanks to a previous project manager who, in order to cover his own poor leadership, threw me under the bus. Our manager happily used his inputs to put me on a performance improvement plan, highlight any and every mistake I made, and try to force me out. She and her manager and the HR rep were relentless and would not listen to reason, no matter how much my new project manager and teammates vouched for me. Every achievement I made on the plan was downplayed and any perceived misstep was exaggerated.

While that was going on I put feelers out to see if I could find another job. A recruiter eventually reached out to me about a position with another company a couple of hundred miles away in a city I hadn’t previously considered moving to. I went through the interview process and was offered the position, which I accepted. The same day I had the official offer letter in my hands I tendered my resignation to my manager. I gave her less than 24 hours’ notice and bid her and her minions farewell the very next day. I told no one where I was going even when they asked. I didn’t want them to have any further foothold in my life.

At that point she was forced out of the equation, so her reign of terror in my daily work life ended. Had I not put out feelers in the first place, had I not persisted in pursuing the other job opportunity as relentlessly as my (now former) manager had been pursuing me, who knows how that chapter of my life would have gone? The process of dealing with her while pursuing a new job was stressful, and I felt helpless at times, but I persisted and eventually got away from her. I don’t know what other equations and people she terrorized after that, but at that point she was no longer my problem, and I have remained vigilant to make sure she doesn’t get a foothold to get back into the outskirts of my professional life. That has included proactively blocking her on any and all social media. (Speaking of which, let me check my LinkedIn right quick. I’ll be back.)

And that right there is often the difference: relentless persistence. Abusive, wicked people are driven by their rage and hatred and entitlement to be relentless in their actions. When one path of vengeance is blocked they tirelessly look for other opportunities to continue to wreak havoc on the subject of their ire. They do not stop until they either get bored, get what they want, or are forceably removed from the equation one way or another. As long as there is any possibility of them finding a way to get what they want, their attitude remains, “I may have lost the battle, but I haven’t lost the war.” They retreat, regroup, and attack anew.

I’ll again use myself as an example: in contrast, I tend to think of a lost battle as a reason to give up entirely. Maybe not the first lost battle or the second, but if it continues past the third I feel as though I may as well stop trying. There is little to no pivoting or regrouping after a few tries. I retreat and give up, convinced the obstacles are too great. I get stuck in my rage at the unnecessary hoops I have to jump through. That anger turns into depression, and I stop trying. But what if I channeled my rage the same way they do: into relentless pursuit of what I want? What if I adopted the attitude, “I may have lost the battle, but I haven’t lost the war,” then continued my pursuit after retreating, regrouping, and pivoting?

Then again, looking at my life from that perspective, that is actually what I have done. I survived two suicide attempts and many years of suicidal ideation and am still here pursuing the life I want. I may have pivoted onto a different path at different times, and I may have stayed too long in a place of regrouping sometimes, but I am still moving and growing and building and learning. I have (quietly, sometimes grudgingly, often angrily as hell) persisted. When I look at history from that perspective, I see the same thing. Resistance may be forced underground, but it never entirely dies out. Freedom may get suppressed, but it is never entirely snuffed out. After a period of regrouping, sometimes far longer than we would prefer, the resistance rises again. Once evil is forced underground people must remain vigilant to not give it a foothold to return after the wicked ones regroup. (The United States did not do that after the Civil War and Great Depression, which is why we are in the period of social, political, and economic freefall we are in now.) So maybe things are bad right now, but I have reasons to hope and work for better times ahead, both in my personal life and in the world at large.