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Surviving Betrayal in Friendship and Love

Wings in Solitude Courtesy: PS Extreme -Wallpaper

It is not easy to survive a betrayal. It pushes the knife into your heart and then twists it for the assurance of a perfect kill. If the repeat acts of failed trust hurt more, it is the absurdity on your part of setting yourself as a sitting duck, twice in a row, which hurts more. You feel let down by yourself as your own intellect mocks your judgement. One can survive lack of intellect, but to live with a mocking intellect, an intellect which blames you for bringing it insult and ignominy is utter despair. Wasn't the intellect always telling you that you can not be friends with people who are not free? 


A man, who is not free is not a man of integrity. What choice does he have, one may argue. It is not the question of what choice he has, it is the question of what choice you have. It is your own solemn responsibility to protect your self. You can not pass it on the one who perpetrates a nasty cut and looks at you with all his teeth gnashing. You look at him with the astonishment of a falling Ceaser and mutter in your breath,"Et Tu, Brutus?". But why do you say that? what good will it serve? You want to recall the nobility in your killer while you die. 

It is not he who has failed you. He has performed to the best of what he was supposed to be. He has rose to his excellence, his excellence was in the final at of betrayal. Yours was not to fall victim, you have fallen short of your being. You had the intelligence to foresee what was to befall on to you, and you chose to ignore it. You longed to be friends and you surrendered to the pangs of loneliness and allowed friendship to substitute your own judgement.As we grow older, isn't there a very lonely corner in our heart which finds home, which grows and grows threatening to engulf our very being and we desperately try to fill it up with those who do not deserve your kindness, let alone your friendship? You tried to wake nobility up where it was long dead. There was dust on the face of nobility. 

Not all men are victim of circumstances, we, more often than not, make the circumstances in which we thrive. Isn't it for such times that Nietzsche wrote,"Flee my friends,Flee to your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones...Where solitude ends, market place begins?."
We chose our circumstances, some people chose their ignoble existence and you can not invoke nobility in the heart where it is long dead. They look at your nobility with mockery, and examine your kindness with suspicion. The humane in them is long since dead, and they carry the dead, cold tomb of kindness in their heart. The stench rises time and again from their dead hearts, which Tennessee Williams termed as smell of mendacity, which he says is stronger then any other smell. The cold is so deep in their nature that warmest of the gesture can not melt it and they carry their ice-knife hid in their sleeves ready to slice your heart away. 
You have to get away from the squalor and rise to the peace. I suggest, the following to myself and to you.

Seven Steps to survive and avoid betrayal:
1. Do not be captive to your own nobility. Not all deserve your love. Do not be a compulsive do-gooder. Do not be a compulsive anything, it demonstrates frailty of human mind.

2. Do not be friends to someone who has no love for you. For someone who looks at you as a tool, an equipment, be that, an unfeeling, cold, hard piece of equipment, which hurts the toe when it falls on the feet. Do not comfort them with a feeling of kindness, maintain the uneasiness which they felt when they first sighted your straight-forward strength. 

3. Do not mentor them, try to invoke nobility in them. It is not asleep in them, it is long dead, killed by their ambition and selfishness. By offering to mentor, you are opening yourself to ridicule if unsuccessful and to damage if you are successful, by creating a monster, with strength same as yours but without your prudence.

4. Keep check on your intent to selflessness. Selflessness is over-rated, and a friend wrote recently, because it is rare. It carried a great truth and great insight. By offering selflessness without a check, we reduce the value of it and open it to public shame and private mockery.

5. Teach yourself solitude. It is sweet, it is understanding and it never betrays. It is the calm breeze which flows over your weary forehead as you lie on the hills where the wind flows in whispers through tall glass blades. Friendship, just as love, will seek you and find you from your solitude. Still, never abandon solitude, let be one of the deserving friends who reach out to you. Do not argue and struggle against it, hold its hands and sit in silence. Liberty lies not in struggle with solitude but in surrender to solitude. In solitude we discover ourselves.

6. All men are not equal. Some men are better men than others and by treating all men equal you are being unkind to those who are better. It takes courage and some amount of self-inflicted pain, to reach a certain degree of nobility. That nobility needs to be honored, and ought not be treated at par with many-too-many. Being kind to all defeats the principles of Justice and what can not be just can not be good. 

7. Spare your soul and spare your time for those who are truly deserving of your love. They are looking for you- your kindred souls and will reach you in time. You can not hurry love, it will find you in time when you are ripe for it. All else is a wait. Try not to fill up the wait with undignified eagerness, help to ripen yourself up.Polish the dust off the edges of your soul and be the love that you strive to obtain. After that you will strive no more, it will come to you, searching for you, calling for you like a long-lost friend, by a name that you have long forgotten.




Comments

Jo Robinson said…
This is a really thought-provoking post. These are true words, and I totally agree with every one of them. Beautifully written too.
Saket Suryesh said…
Thanks, Jo. For your comments. These thoughts are leitmotif of my book, but had renewed reasons for writing. Solitude never fails you..

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