Getting Burned

I keep telling you to be at peace with the fact that you will be stolen from, victimized, exploited, bullied, ticketed, towed, mistreated, yelled at, irritated, annoyed, harrassed, or otherwise molested. I keep telling you to be cool about it. C'est la vie. I keep telling you, but you keep thinking you can avoid it, or that you are too tough to just take it. You ought to just stand up for yourself, you're thinking. Right?

Right, I guess. Do it if you want to. Talk to the cops. Tell them where they're wrong. Fight back. See where it gets you.

Let me tell you a thing or two about being a tough guy. Every tough guy I ever knew on the streets is dead, in jail, or one day simply vanished. That's a bad record for tough guys.

Let me tell you a thing or two about me. I was a teen runaway. I engaged in all the jobs available to teen runaways. (Don't make me spell it out.) Every one of those jobs is illegal. Later I spent five years living in a car, a lifestyle which occasions contact with authorities. In my lifetime I have had no broken bones or serious injuries arising from conflicts, and I have spent precisely zero hours in a holding cell. I have never, ever, been arrested, and according to the law, I damn well should have been. That's a pretty good survival record for the peaceful.

You may say that you aren't homeless, you don't break the law, so it doesn't matter to you. I say you will still be ripped off, you will still be victimized, and a peaceful outlook is still your best weapon. You do not gain from violence.

I keep quiet when my mouth can put me in jail. I flee rather than fight. I communicate calmly with authorities. If I need to fight them, I will do it in court, and my peaceful, cooperative, silent style will make certain that I am in the best possible position to win in that arena.

Peace, my friends, is an incredibly tough defensive stand. Follow it, and you will suffer far less.