An eye for an eye makes the world blind....

Has it ever crossed your mind that if you were to attack someone, physically or verbally, you would not be able to get away unscathed by, at least, a retort?

It is a normal animal reaction to external stimulus to respond to anything that might threaten its existence or cause any sort of harm. It is, but, only natural to react to anything that that happens around us.

Let us take, for example, a bully trying to make someone weaker listen to them, or make them finish their homework, or whatever. The victim has two choices. The first one, being, to listen to the bully and do whatever he says, or, stand up to him, punch him in the face, and let him know that you will not oblige him. The second option leading to a brawl and then detention over the weekend.

I am not asking you to condone bullying, or give in to it. But there are other options that can be used to come around this problem.

Speaking on the national front, we see a lot of communal violence. One community rages violence against another and then the other must get back. It makes sense for once..... but just once. The long term repercussions are difficult to handle.

First, one party fights. Then the other must retaliate. Then the other must respond and so on and so forth. Ever wondered where it would end?? Oh, yes, it would end. Just not very nicely. We will end up punching each other till we fall.

Violence is not the answer to violence. Did not the great Mahatma send the British packing with his non violence? This great example of non violent response did what centuries of violence could not do.

Then why resort to violence every time. We know what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We know what happened at Pearl Harbour. We know what happened when Hitler tried to annihilate the Jews.

Despite the fact that retaliating with violence was never a good solution we still imagine that if we were under international threat we would use our nuclear weapons to drive them away. If we all started using nuclear weapons against each other we would end up ruining everything the earth has to offer. Then we would not only not have any enemies, we would also not have any friends.

An eye for an eye is not a solution. It is the fuel for an ongoing struggle which will remain a struggle as long as there is anyone to sustain it.