A Subtle Form of Violence
By Eileen Dooling, RSM, Executive Director
Posted on
A few weeks ago, the Sisters of Mercy Northeast Community sent a letter to each member inviting us to engage in a “deeper reflection of our own internalized violence.” I am so grateful to my community for continually encouraging me to look deeper at my behaviors, language and motivations, but the interior exploration of personal violence is not an easy one.
With the repeated episodes of violence in our country and the language of violence filling the airwaves, it is easy to look outward and condemn someone else. But the look inward reveals a much more subtle violence in myself: humor that hurts, a sarcastic comment, a point made, a “deserved” humiliation, a pleasure in getting even, among others. Our insides are sometimes not pretty.
Someone once wrote that “violence begins in our need to be right,” and that is frightening when I think of the arguments (maybe wars, too) engaged in for no other reason than to be right — or to prove someone else wrong.
And that look inward might also reveal a kind of violence toward myself: that mistake I made that I cannot forgive; the self- expectation I can never achieve; the work ethic that stifles creativity and joy, and leaves me weary and unavailable.
Yes, violence is not always someone else’s problem. While these acts of personal violence do not make the headlines or the evening news, they do contribute to the culture of violence in which we live. Perhaps this self- reflection will help us move to greater compassion and humility, and thereby change in some small way, a society that has almost accepted violence as a norm.
May peace be yours.
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