Hiren Deliwala
By Hiren Deliwala
I’ll admit it freely: I want to get even.
With people. With objects. Ever stubbed your toe and felt a flash of rage at the furniture? I have. And it’s worse when the anger is aimed at someone who’s trying to be helpful – like that colleague who always shares advice I didn’t ask for. It’s embarrassing how much I want to craft the perfect comeback, to serve up a hot, satisfying plate of revenge.
As the great Harrison Ford said in Shrinking, “No one goes through this life unscathed.” He’s right. Every day we take on small injuries, cuts and burns, and often, they come from people we love. Family. Friends. Co-workers. The ones who mean well but still manage to hit the soft spots.
When it happens, our reactions vary. Some of us explode on the spot, full-on Bollywood movie finale action sequences. Others, like me, keep it inside and let the anger ferment. I’ve sat in silence, seething, crafting the perfect speech I never actually deliver. Imagining the moment I’ll put someone in their place, finally say the thing I should’ve said.
It’s not a good look, and I know that. But there’s something deeply human about the impulse to hurt someone back—maybe not with actions, but with a line that lands just right. We tell ourselves they deserve it, that we were pushed into it. “Usne shuru kiya tha!” (They started it!) We hold onto that idea to protect our sense of goodness, to rationalize our worst impulses as something justified.
I struggle with this more than I’d like to admit. I know it eats away at relationships and keeps me stuck. And still, I go back to it, again and again. So, I ask myself, do we come into the world wired for this kind of response? Or is it a behavior we pick up, refine, and repeat until it becomes habit? And more importantly, can we let it go?
Philosophers, therapists, and self-help writers tell us the answer is forgiveness. Generosity. Let it go. “Maaf karna seekho,” they say. Learn to forgive. It sounds simple enough. My grandmother used to say, “Take five steps back.” These days, it’s “Take five breaths before responding with an angry email.” I’ve read all the wisdom and heard all the advice. I’ve even tried it – though usually for about two and a half minutes before the heat returns.
Forgiveness is beautiful in theory and messy in real life. It doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean excusing what happened. It means letting go of the fantasy of the perfect revenge speech. It means accepting that the world isn’t targeting us, that people aren’t thinking about us as much as we think they are.
Oliver Burkeman, in Four Thousand Weeks, says, “The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.” He’s not exaggerating. So the question becomes: Do I really want to waste these weeks or months or years carrying around resentment, obsessing over moments that didn’t go my way?
Growing older – yes, even into your fifties – sometimes just means realizing that people often hurt us unintentionally. Most of them are just trying to survive their own mess. I’ve said things that landed wrong. I’ve missed signs when someone needed something from me. Most people, including me, don’t always understand the impact we’re having.
It feels personal, but it usually isn’t. So these days, when I catch myself building a script in my head, imagining a dramatic comeback, I try to pause. I ask, “Is this actually going to help? Or am I just feeding something that won’t serve me?” I still get it wrong plenty of times. But once in a while, I stop myself. And those small wins – they matter.
Maybe that’s what it looks like to grow – recognizing your own flaws, learning to live with others’, and still choosing to show up. This life isn’t perfect, but it’s still worth it. Still worth building friendships, even if they fall apart sometimes. Still worth loving people, even when it hurts.
Because between the missteps and disappointments, there are also real moments. A shared laugh. A conversation that lands just right. A sense of being seen and accepted.
Forgiveness, compassion, patience, these are not trophies you earn. They are muscles that you train. They’re habits you practice and forget and practice again.
A friend once told me, “We’re all just trying to get home without getting too lost.” Maybe the way we help each other get there isn’t by scoring points or getting even – but by not pushing each other further off the path.
The next time I feel that familiar need to snap back or set someone straight, I’ll try to breathe. I’ll try to smile, even if I don’t feel like it. And I’ll remind myself: life’s too short for so much poison.
Hiren Deliwala is a Charlotte-based overthinker, closet philosopher, and avid board gamer. He writes about everyday life, Indian upbringing, and finding humor in the chaos. When not philosophizing over chai, he’s usually losing arguments to his wife and, shockingly, learning from them. Contact: hcdeliwala@gmail.com
