Picking fights.

This post is something that has been simmering for a long time, I just never actually understood the simmering well enough to recognize it for what it is.

Learning to pick the correct fights is a skill that I have always misinterpreted. I thought of it as choosing to fight when you can win, battles that you have a statistical chance of coming out on tops. It took me some time to realize that its far more important to choose my battles for the right reasons.

Maybe its in my nature to be somewhat combative. I've been at odds with my natural aggression before, sometimes blaming it for the way my life turned out. The 'if only' arguments are far too familiar. But its a bloodlust. It rises without me realizing it, taking over part of my conscience. I live for this kind of thing. I thrive on it. It gives me a high like nothing can. Left to be unleashed without any limiter, I picked fights that I didn't really give much thought to. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have done it.

I could be very vague with this blog post. But not this time. I think this time I will use specific examples.

The examples that shine the brightest all happened in the SPB. Don't ask me why. It could be because I was a writer unleashed at that time, or because there were people there that eventually helped me to make more sense of fighting.

I think the fight that I never really wanted to pick was with SPARC. True, I do somewhat hold their ideals in contempt, but my intention was never to go to war. I do not regret writing that article, and the ideas that I expressed in that article are still opinions that I keep. But as I looked at the reasons I wrote the article, I realized that it wasn't really to promote any change or to inform. It was to show how much the organizers' objectives were indefensible on an intellectual level. It was meant to humiliate. The intentions were not noble at all, and I took moral high ground. It became somewhat apparent when I went to meet with the organizers with Sangheetha. I realized then that there was something wrong, and I froze. In doing that, I left my editor in chief without backup against a pack of defensive, snarling, offended SPARC members. I never said this before, but I'm sorry. I wrote that article, and it should have been me defending it.

There were other occasions as well, especially when it came to sticking it to authority. I seized every chance to take a swipe at STAD, whether it was warranted or not. My thinking was simple. I came up with the conclusion that STAD had no idea what the students are capable of and that their one and only objective was control. To a large extent, that is true. But when I found myself throwing punches even when there was no reason to, that same creeping feeling that something was wrong came back. Sometimes, they really are trying to be helpful. They aren't always deserving of hatred.

Perhaps it was ego that stopped me from rethinking all of this earlier. Maybe it was fear of the repercussions.

But the biggest conflict that this had led me into is the splinter in the SPB. In that case, it looked increasingly like there were two sides, and it was obvious which side I was going to have to pick. It was then that I went into fight mode. My single minded objective was to destroy the enemy, till the point that the reason for the war was lost to me. The same funny feeling came back, and showed a little when I found myself admitting that I would do nothing but keep the organization running as it was. I think that publishership became something I had to deal with in the event I won the war. The objective was to win, nothing else. The ideals I was fighting for got lost in translation. I'm not saying that those ideals weren't worth fighting for. I just needed to give them a little more thought.

I think I have learnt that now. Above all else, the reasons I fight should be kept in mind. Only then will I be able to trust myself to do the right thing.