They might be crazier than you
My neighbors on either side and a friend both told me that they concur with my outrage towards men who hit women, and women who hit dogs, but they worry that I might be opening the door to someone crazy retaliating. Today T was by and he said, “to be present, you have to engage, the times I have bit my tongue are regrets.” But you start to wonder what begets what? Chris Rose wrote the other day of a Ghandi type approach to litterers rather than the histrionics he has acquired in the face of flagrant littering around this city. “I will pick this up for you, because you might not be capable right now of doing it.”
How does one approach not responding to a man hitting a woman? or a woman beating a dog? How do you take that deep breath and say it is not for you to get involved? When you are a care taker by nature, it is your nature to take a bullet for someone else and deny yourself your own self defense, but in the end and at the end of the day have you changed anything or anyone. Will that man go home and beat his girlfriend? Will that dog take another lick from that woman’s leash when you turn the corner and are out of sight?