Learning from fictional characters

I know that I have discussed that I have learned valuable lessons from my own fictional characters. That may sound odd, but it is the way things happen sometimes. The other day I was working out a scene in my head about a character who learns he inadvertently caused a death and he is devastated by the information. He is blaming himself. Another woman comes to the cemetery where he is and tells him that although she blamed him for the death of her best friend at first, she no longer does anymore. The waves of violence, according to that character, began many years ago and just kept going until it caused her friend's death, not him. She was in the same place too, but made up her mind that the cycle of anger and violence was going to stop with her. That included self-blame. Enough is enough.

All over the world, violence is continued down generations, creating waves upon waves of anger, vengeance and fueled by more violence. No one remembers how it all began. A small child is beaten and molested by adults and grows up dysfunctional and often attacks others or in the case above attacks herself. On and on it rolls gathering additional anger as it grows like a snow ball down a hill until it is huge.

I had such a childhood and unknowingly added such karma to this world, my own versions of anger when I either correctly or incorrectly interpreted anyone's behavior towards me. I was the snow ball going down the hill and getting bigger and bigger as I grew older. I lashed out at others and of course took out the anger towards myself. Well, like the fiction person I outlined above, enough is enough. It stops with me.

Maybe or even probably the world will not notice my lack of participation in the cycle of violence. I am not laboring under the delusion that it will be noticed, but on some level somewhere it will. I believe that. It is the story of the man who picks up starfish on the beach and flings them back into the surf. When asked if he could make any difference to the huge number of starfish that die breached on the sands of this world, he replied that it made a difference to the one he just threw back into the water. Well, I am going to do this one starfish at a time. Who knows what effect I will have, but I know I will not be contributing anymore anger to this world.