I recently received an e-mail from a long-time Weekly Challenger subscriber about a couple of nasty letters and e-mails she had received from family members. That made me appreciate how fortunate I am. My family and friends would never ever send me anything that poisonous and nasty. They’d never think anything like that either, or try and hurt me, the way those family members hurt my subscriber. I am so grateful to, and for, my friends and family for being supportive and kind and loving, no matter how hard I’ve made it on them. And I can be hard to deal with sometimes. We all can.

It also made me stop and think about the people who are malicious and nasty, and do try and hurt others. They can’t possibly be happy themselves. Happy people don’t try to make other people miserable; in fact, they try to make others happy. It’s like we want to bring the rest of the world to our level, whatever our level is. When we’re unhappy, we (subconsciously) want everyone else to be unhappy too. And when we’re happy, we want the whole world to be happy. When we’re indignant about a perceived wrong, we want others to be indignant too. So when someone is trying to hurt us, it’s because they’re hurting. When someone is mean and nasty, it’s because that’s how their life feels to them.

And yes, we’ll still feel hurt by their slings and arrows. Remember that old childhood chant “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?” It’s not true. Words do hurt. But perhaps we can look through our hurt and find sympathy and pity for the other person. They are hurting worse than they have hurt us. And they’re hurting like that all the time.

Besides–let’s be honest here and enjoy a second of maliciousness ourselves–just think how annoying it will be to that inflictor-of-pain to be pitied instead of taken seriously. To be seen as pathetic instead of powerful.

And we get to gloat–because we have risen above!