[This is the second part of the article on the search for justice. To read the first part, please click: ‘Don’t fall into the justice trap, it’s self-defeating’]
WOULD YOU BELIEVE that jealousy is an offshoot of the I-want-justice behaviour? Let’s assume, for instance, that your spouse is having an affair. Would you not think s/he is straying because of some failing in yourself? Would it not affect your self-worth? Would you not think it’s unfair of him/her to cheat on you? Would you not confront your spouse with questions like “Have I ever done such a thing?” or “How could you do this to me?”
Most people would.
According to American psychiatrist Dr Wayne W. Dyer, you can never predict how a person you love will react to another human being. So, if your partner does pick another, you will be immobilised by jealousy only if you see that decision as having something to do with you.
“That is your choice. If a partner loves another, he isn’t being ‘unfair’, he is simply being,” writes Dr Dyer in his 1976 bestseller, Your Erroneous Zones. “Maybe he just wanted to do something different, perhaps he felt love for someone besides his wife, or perhaps he wanted to prove his virility or keep old age at bay,” he observes.
“Jealousy is really a demand that someone love you in a certain way, and you saying ‘It isn’t fair’ when they don’t. It comes from a lack of self-confidence, simply because it is an other-directed activity. It allows their behaviour to be the cause of your emotional discomfort. People who really like themselves don’t… allow themselves to be distraught when someone else doesn’t play fair,” he writes.
Another example
How often have you found yourself saying “If he can do that, so can I”? This is a typical instance of justice-seeking where you justify your action by someone else’s behaviour. According to Dr Dyer, this is the “neurotic rationale for cheating, stealing, flirting, lying, being late, or anything that you’d rather not admit into your own value system.”
Some typical examples are cutting off a driver on the highway because he did it to you, hurrying to overtake a slowpoke and slow him down because he slowed you down, or leaving your high-beams on because oncoming cars are doing it. Such reactions put your life in jeopardy because your sense of justice has been violated, says Dr Dyer.
Why people do it
Dr Dyer lists reasons why people stick to their it’s-not-fair behaviour. Some of them are:
(i) It makes you feel superior and honourable. “As long as you insist on a mythological justice system for everything… you’ll hold on to your holier-than-thou feeling and use up your present moments with smugness rather than effective living.”
(ii) It enables you to justify being immobilised by shifting responsibility to people or events that are not fair. This, in turn, means you can avoid risks and change.
(iii) It helps you to justify immoral, illegal or inappropriate behaviour by making your action someone else’s responsibility. If he can do it, so can I.
(iv) It allows you to manipulate people, particularly your children. You can tell them they are being unfair if they don’t keep “a precise tally of give-and-take” in the relationship. “A nice little device for getting your own way.”
(v) It lets you justify vindictive behaviour because everything must be fair. “Just as you must repay a favour, so you must repay a meanness.”
Strategies for change
Here are some of Dr Dyer’s suggestions to give up the futile search for justice:
(i) Start looking at your emotional life as independent of what anyone else does. This will stop you from hurting when others behave in ways that you don’t like.
(ii) Consciously stop yourself from saying things like ‘Would I do that to you?’. Instead, say ‘You’re different from me, though it’s tough to accept it’.
(iii) Instead of saying ‘It’s not fair’, start saying ‘It’s unfortunate that…’ This will help you to accept reality instead of insisting the world be what it is not.
(iv) Do away with comparisons. Have your own goals independent of others. “Set out to be what you want, without references to what others have or don’t have.”
(v) Make a list of things you consider unfair. Then ask yourself: “Will the iniquities go away if I’m upset?”
(vi) Finally, remember that “revenge is just another way of being controlled by others. Do what you, not they, decide is for you.”
Bottomline
“It’s not the injustice that counts, it’s what you do about it,” writes Dr Dyer.