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The Problem Behind Wanting Payback

Updated: Mar 23


The problem behind wanting vengeance for those who have wronged you is simple: It is unrealistic to expect justice for every misplaced deed done to you by others, which means that justice will not always be served, and that some people will unfortunately be able to get away with things, even things that theoretically deserve retribution.

A few years ago, I went to a one-time meeting with a psychologist, and no, I see no shame in consulting them when one needs to.


He was probably the biggest snob I have ever met, as he estimated my current anxiety back then to be "a shallow existence of thought". When I read that report he wrote, I asked someone who knew me better than him what it meant.

That person said, "It's just something psychologists do", even though they also disagreed with that assessment. I wrote books and articles, yet even for a professional, it is just sufficient to judge a book by its cover, a.k.a. first impression, and declare that this is the case.

I really hated that guy, because he didn't understand that I was very anxious at the time, and he thought that this distress was a regular occurrence, a norm, without spending more than a few minutes with me. Truly absurd. I even told him I had a website, but he seemed to have discarded it.

He just wanted, so it seems, to recommend certain medications and be over with my case. There is no doubt that maybe one is more than one seems; this is simply a generalization of a very specific pattern.

It is because alienating professionals like him exist that people get assessed wrongly, that it is not the life of someone at hand but rather, like a product in a factory, a series of approving or disapproving cases of patients. As if any anxious person lives in a shallow consciousness, as if people's emotions change and are preserved depending on the situation.

For the record, I had no intention of being there, but I digress. I had a panic attack at the time, and some people thought I was insane or something like that, which is a weak judgment for a person with General Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. It is one of the reasons why I live hermitically in this world, and yet I digress once again.

I can't simply make that psychologist, whose name and face I've forgotten, pay for his erroneous assessment of my character. It is impossible to turn back the wheels of time and stand in front of him and say to him that Tomasio Rubinshtein is no shallow-minded man, just because I am very easily stressed by things.

I can't make him pay for writing a false report just because he was bad at his job, in my opinion. It is beyond my control, and that is a product of the past, and I'm sure as hell not intending to see this cold figure again.

That, you see, is one of the cases where nothing can be done, as the case has been closed long ago, and the only "sin" on my part is being with the wrong people at the wrong time.

It's why I only leave my house when needed to, because "regular" people don't really understand people with my condition, and it would be pretentious on their behalf to admit that they do, including some psychologists such as himself unfortunately.

Only absolute dictators can reach such a sphere of possibility, when it comes to retribution. They have armed forces; they have secret policemen, they might even have spies and hackers. If they cannot influence much in the world at large, they surely can do so within their own nations.



We, the regular people, cannot just make someone disappear, be kidnapped, or be assassinated. All we can do is redeem our own name, our own self-respect, and our own reputation.

When the figure of influence is permanently absent, then there is little reason to want them to pay, unless you have or had some emotional attachment to them, or unless they did something very shameful to you.

Even if I remembered his name and face, I don't see why I should be vengeful toward someone who doesn't understand G.A.D. It's a fact that people's personalities are best assessed over the course of more than one meeting.

The thing with Ms. Chen is different. She justified her abandonment of me by saying that I'm irrelevant, and we knew each other for around 8 years. I showed her this site once, only to be told that she does not understand what is written. She didn't know anything, and did not even respond when I, back then, gave her a book I wrote.

Looking back, she really treated me like trash and even sacrificed me because she "respected her partner". To be humiliated like that, all because you're autistic, all because you're too detestable in someone's eyes, especially someone you once held dear, is something I very much struggle to forgive and to carry on.

She knew me better than that professional, and even though she wasn't as educated as him, she at least knew me better. Nonetheless, she had the audacity to treat me as filth, as filth beneath her feet.

Do you see another difference between these two examples? The doctor didn't seem to have the courage to tell me what he thinks of me face-to-face; he instead wrote it in a note for other professionals to read.

She told me what she thinks directly, with little care and little empathy. Then, with all this filthy behavior, I am expected to move on and erase her painful memory from my head. All because life has changed throughout the years.

How can one expect that such an experience will not repeat itself with another woman? This is why I prefer to mostly sacrifice hope for love, not because I love her, which I don't, but because love in general is something very, very filthy. It is filthy not when there are butterflies, so to speak; it is filthy when you are redeemed as replaceable, expandable, and disposable.

I will therefore fight for my relevance, not in her eyes, but in the eyes of the world, which is a far more worthy feature. The psychologist was merely a "product analyzer"; she was more "human" than him. She didn't care for what I wrote, for the pain she inflicted upon me; the psychologist at least tried finding solutions, as any doctor would try.

I don't know why many of my articles are finished like this, but perhaps it is a spontaneous motif. I will try to prove my relevance to the world, because otherwise, I have little reason to stay alive, other than to write. It's not a destiny or "fate", it is a means to an end. A component of contribution, and to hopefully serve as proof, that Tomasio Rubinshtein isn't, or at least wasn't, an irrelevant man!

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Tomasio A. Rubinshtein, Philosocom's Founder & Writer

I am a philosopher from Israel, author of several books in 2 languages, and Quora's Top Writer of the year 2018. I'm also a semi-hermit who has decided to dedicate his life to writing and sharing my articles across the globe. Several podcasts on me, as well as a radio interview, have been made since my career as a writer. More information about me can be found here.

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