“I’ll destroy you.”
“I’ll make you lose everything you hold dear.”
These are common lines used in dramas as curses against opponents. The fact that they appear so frequently suggests they resonate with the general public’s emotions. However, harboring such feelings toward an enemy reveals a one-dimensional perspective, seeing only one side of the coin.
Kelly Clarkson’s hit song “Stronger” begins its chorus with the line, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” This lyric, meaning that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, is a quote from the writings of Nietzsche.
Interpreting Nietzsche’s words, simply making an enemy suffer without killing them could actually make them stronger. However, seeking revenge through murder, staining one’s hands with blood and becoming a murderer, is an even greater defeat. Therefore, both killing an enemy and making them lose everything are failing grades as acts of revenge.
A wise person should wish for their enemy’s continued success. They should hope they achieve universally envied success, have a smooth and prosperous life without experiencing significant failures or despair, and avoid the economic problems like unemployment or bankruptcy, or serious illnesses affecting themselves or their family members, which everyone inevitably faces at some point in life. They should wish them only joy and good health. If they live such a life, the enemy will live a shallow, unwise, and clueless, truly animalistic life, and (if there is an afterlife) will be 100% destined for hell. In this sense, the Korean greeting “Become rich” is equivalent to a curse. “Walk only on flower paths” is equivalent to “Go to hell.”
Trials and despair, painful repentance, and the (ego’s) death and resurrection are milestones in one’s journey to achieve depth and understand the meaning of the world, life, and eternity. Therefore, if I were to face an enemy, I would offer them a delicious meal and sincerely wish for them to live a prosperous and healthy life without any trials or failures.
And for those I love, I would pray that God bestows upon them great trials and failures, just short of killing them. This is so that I can share eternal companionship with them after they have gained deep wisdom and God’s grace. Coincidentally, this way of thinking aligns with a passage in the Bible:
“Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” -Romans1 12:20-
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