On animosity, its spectacular consequences, and the occasional miracle of letting go
Animosity is a common human trait that is often more passionate than love. Long before social media, OTTs or emojis, we built hatred walls, offered cold shoulders and nursed grievances for the most trivial reasons. It has reached such an extent that many players have started lobbying for it to be included in the Olympics.
Animosity is the harbinger of hostility that settles in your mind, body and behaviour. Somewhat like the relative who came for three days and three years later made herself comfortable in the spare room, complaining like a broken record, about everything — from food to the bathroom. Almost makes you feel that you are the unwelcome guest.
It often begins with something not really huge. A perceived insult , a cross fire of unfair words, a boundary crossed. The feeling is of course real, the wound just. What happens next is totally unlike anger, which flares and fades. Animosity is like slow boiling milk or a marinating dish or a rehearsal for a performance. The story gets repeated in the mind until it hardens into truth and the perceived truth regurgitates like acid in the stomach.
And then, in spurts, words and action unravel.
The Neighbours, The Friend
Animosity can be so close to home. With a hundred opinions in one apartment complex, the laboratory of animosity moves from experiment to patent pretty fast. Does it begin at the parking lot? The shared maid? A harmless dog in the elevator? The watchman undertaking personal chores? The strong smell of filter coffee wafting upwards at 5 a.m? Maybe you don’t need a reason. Animosity has over a hundred personalities. Varma, Sharma, Rohini, Mohini. Factions are only a few conversations away. The Sharma family looks the other way when the Aiyers make their appearance at meetings. Some of them do not even attend meetings. Children are briefed on who and who not. Committees and sub-committees are replaced by WhatsApp groups and secret meetings in “B” block.
The tragedy of animosity in apartment clusters and communities is that the poison spreads like arsenic, slow and painful. The principal players may be few, but the rest of the community wonders why they build such long tunnels where the light at the end is never visible.
Friendships, too, are not immune. There is something about being too close and understanding each other so well that they know what hurts the other. These rifts go deep and long. Love break-ups can be easy, difficult or vicious, often for something not easy to understand. The intimacy turns into rupture and acts as ammunition to be used against each other.
The World Outside: Huge Egos, Bigger Budgets
Zoom out from the apartment complex to the world outside, and you find that the behaviour of nations is so similar, but when armed drones, missiles, fighter jets and nuclear arsenals come into play, animosity becomes a dangerous game. For centuries, the patterns have been clearly discernible, with the mayhem and the devastation caused by wars. Autocratic leaders have polished traditional wounds and inflamed domestic sentiment to gain political edge. Ordinary citizens on both sides of wars just want affordability, jobs, roads, water and better living conditions. Why not have leaders from cricket, football and other sports that we can look up to and admire?
What distinguishes political animosity is its extraordinary shelf life. Grievances are preserved, reshaped, and retold across generations. The line between legitimate concern and constructed narrative grows increasingly blurred. Nations become the story, and people live within its consequences.
The rigid, uncompromising positions that leaders resort to at times is animosity dressed in political attire that is popular domestically and figurative chest thumping. However, this can be diplomatically catastrophic and history has shown that extending a hand is far better than clenching a fist.
The Body Keeps Score
Animosity is directed towards the perceived enemy, but research indicates that the person hosting it is harmed in more than one way. Stressed hormones, disturbed sleep patterns, weakening immunity and shortened life are unfortunate byproducts. The villain becomes the victim. It can aptly be described as drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. You will be defined not by what you stand for, but rigidity and uncompromising attitude will define you. At a personal level, not a life to be satisfied about and on the world stage, a nation that has lost all respect.
Crossing the Line
Animosity does not dissolve easily. The hurt that triggered it was real, and the anger justified. Moving beyond it is neither simple nor predictable.
Placing the hatred in perspective and mentally conditioning yourself to accept that it is not the end of the world may help. A serious inward looking conversation is needed.
The awkward business of hearing the other side, but not necessarily agreeing with it, needs to be gone through. The other side is also hurting and feeling they are the wronged party. The ice has to be thawed, though a resolution may still be far away. This may give a sense of direction and other avenues to contain animosity.
The most useful decision you make may be to deprioritise the issues that caused animosity. Not forgetting. Or forgiving. But ticking it down as something that will not sap your energy. Stepping back a little, waiting for something improbable to occur. Silence breeds grudge.
In one of my earlier blogs, I had said, “ Memory is the story book of our life”.
It is time to turn the page. The story is long, with more interesting episodes ahead.
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By
Mr V Krishnan
Covai S3 Retirement Community