Pain For What Gain?
I can barely see out of my right eye. My hand hurts (minor in comparison to the following) and I have significant pain in my side. Too low to be oriented with rib damage, too high for any organ damage I can think of, but still significant. Perhaps muscle related. Relevance?
I broke up a fight today in a bar next to my place of work. Earning the trophies mentioned above. Still I am force to wonder about my actions and the above mentioned consequences. I broke up a fight that due to the one sided (that I could view) escalation will finish elsewhere. I know not the cause or who was right. I do know that the end will probably be unchanged, just delayed.
So I wonder. Was I right in getting myself hurt delaying something that will continue down the line? Or should I have minded my own business? My body says I will think of the latter choice as preferable in the morning. My heart says I did what needed to be done. My mind says there is no way with present information to assess the situation.
Off topic, unrelated to you folks, and undoubtedly a waste of type space. MC - I made notes for my response to comments on the last post, but I hurt too much to develop it tonight. For the rest of you, this is a highly irrelevant post, so please continue with your life, or something close to it.
I broke up a fight today in a bar next to my place of work. Earning the trophies mentioned above. Still I am force to wonder about my actions and the above mentioned consequences. I broke up a fight that due to the one sided (that I could view) escalation will finish elsewhere. I know not the cause or who was right. I do know that the end will probably be unchanged, just delayed.
So I wonder. Was I right in getting myself hurt delaying something that will continue down the line? Or should I have minded my own business? My body says I will think of the latter choice as preferable in the morning. My heart says I did what needed to be done. My mind says there is no way with present information to assess the situation.
Off topic, unrelated to you folks, and undoubtedly a waste of type space. MC - I made notes for my response to comments on the last post, but I hurt too much to develop it tonight. For the rest of you, this is a highly irrelevant post, so please continue with your life, or something close to it.
posted by Wanderer at 1:50 AM
4 Comments:
ouch.
when I've stepped into other people's messes (never an actual fistfight mind you) I've always gotten hurt. It's rare that I know if I did the right thing. A certain situation comes to mind. It was 10 years ago. I still don't know if I did the right thing, but I've still got the emotional scars to show for it.
That said, I hope you don't have too long a recovery. On behalf of those people who certainly won't say it- I'll say thanks for doing what you thought was best. In the end, that's really all we can do.
When you said on the phone you wished you were me, is that because I'm much bigger than you? I couldn't really hear like 50% of what you were saying through that call.
Incidentally, I was thinking about it and I think I have determined that I wouldn't have done what you did.
You can't break up a one-sided fight, you can only delay it. What you have to do in that situation is enter the fight on the side of he who doesn't wish to fight.
I'm thinking of an incident at Aquinas where there were these two guys picking on some band geek who was just basically ducking and covering and hoping for the best. So, knowing nothing of the conflict other than one side wanted to fight and one didn't, I stood between the two parties and started throwing fists at the aggressor until it had been settled.
In the case of your incident where if I heard you right there was a preponderance of numbers on the aggressor side, that might not have been the best choice, but since your way probably won't work it might have been best to call the police, rather than get hurt to buy some schmuck a few minutes.
But, I will say that as far as flinch reactions go, it was a good one and much better than cowards who identify a need to help but choose not to because it's dangerous.
You know, neither fear nor success has any bearing on whether one is a hero. All it takes to be a hero is to knowingly and intentionally undertake something that needs to be done despite the dangers. You did do that.
I was in pain both in the writing and talking, and a little disoriented as demonstrated. I looked at what I wrote and see where the misleading probably happened. Initially both sides had multiple friends, and I don't know how it started, but they were both in it. It was unclear when I dove in if others were planning on joining the fray.
The one sided issue was meant to say that once it was over I only saw the reactions of one side, those being to call a number of friends and quickly pack the bar. Thus my assumption that this would be finished in a very one sided manner later, unless the other side was doing the same thing.
The only comments I got from those who know me who weren't there prior to coming online was my mother who just calmly suggested I should probably not stick my head between two pairs of flying fists.
Assessing it today, I see that I contributed at least to the moving of this violence away from this bar. For those of you who don't know the place, it is a tiny little bar most don't even know is there that was just purchased this year by an ambitious guy about my age. So since he didn't need that shit, that was a contribution. (Not my usual haunt, MC, the one across the street)
That at least is something so I will hold onto that. Your words at the end are definitely appreciated, MC. I hadn't even articulated it in my mind, but that is what my mind was kind of grasping at as an answer today. (Well, except for the word hero. That is a little bit of an exaggeration.)
Well, you see, when you told it to me on the phone I thought you said it was a whole lot of guys beating up on one guy. That would have been heroic.
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