When the Spite Runs Out
Not all sparks need to bring conflagrations
I used to say that my biggest achievements in my life, like getting my Ph.D., receiving tenure, publishing my book, were fueled by spite. Given that all of those things were related to my academic career and occurred at a very different point in my life, that would be accurate. But as I’ve gained more clarity on my priorities, I’ve finally grasped a very obvious point that others have repeatedly tried to help me see: spite is not a sustainable source of motivation, nor is it healthy; mainly because of its reliance on anger.
While spite and anger are inextricably intertwined, spite has slightly more focus. It is a “feeling or attitude of contempt, insolent disdain” (etymonline. italics mine). “Insolence” here points to a “disregard to others”(etymonline). If anger is amorphous, spite is slightly less so: spite is directed at proving others (people, systems, institutions, etc.) wrong. I completed my Ph.D. to spite the people and system that told me to quit. I earned tenure to spite those who said I wouldn’t or who threatened to sabotage it. So while spite may have been a kind of directed anger, it was not a direction in and of itself. When I was angry at my lack of progress on my Ph.D., rather than take responsibility for that lack of progress, my anger was focused on all the things I perceived that were holding me back, rather than on putting myself on a path forward.
But there is a certain value in noticing when spite and its originary anger arise. We can think of those moments of anger as ignition points of sorts; indicators that something is wrong; that a boundary has been crossed; that we — or someone or something we love — is being mistreated. David Whyte tells us in Consolations, “the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.” It is, according to him, a response to a feeling of powerlessness, and that “Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling that something is profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability.”
If anger and its related spite act as ignition points, it’s what we do with that fire that matters. Is it igniting movement and action in a specific direction or is it just burning us up from the inside out? Anger can distract us, and cause us to mistake immediacy for efficacy, and struggle for movement. When anger is unchecked, we become a rocket that explodes on the launch pad, or a firework that explodes on the ground. Everything at the center is consumed, causing plenty of damage to anything around it. The force of anger ejects emotional shrapnel outward from our center in all directions, but never moves us away from our origin point.
We may think that proving others wrong is a valid objective or direction, but in the end it’s really nothing more than a desire for validation. We struggle to prove some point but ironically further entrench ourselves in a space we desperately want to leave. I’ve felt this deeply when I’ve struggled. Whether it was in grad school or in the later stages of my university career, it wasn’t so much that I had a place where I wanted to be as much as I wanted to be “anyplace but here.” There was no calling forward, just a struggle.
We can also see this tragically unfold when we’re particularly angry at another person and act to spite them. Our most terrible and hurtful mistakes can happen when the “anyplace but here” is replaced with “anyone but them.” How many times have we witnessed ourselves or others explode out of a terrible relationship directly into another even more terrible relationship?
When we let anger or spite lead, it burns unattended, uncontrolled, and consumes our autonomy. We cede our responsibility for our own actions and our own needs, not only burning us from within, but causing us to burn bridges behind us, betraying spite’s fundamental insecurity: a loss of trust in ourselves. We act in ways that close off any possibility of return because we aren’t trusting ourselves to make the right decision or to stick with it. Like Cortés, we scuttle our ships, taking only what we feel is necessary and burning the rest to eliminate choices rather than actually take ownership of a choice.
In this way, spite is a denial that we have changed or grown, or that we are worthy of better. Instead of understanding that we have outgrown the situation because we need — or deserve — more, we blame the outside forces or people we feel have betrayed us. Our leaving is their fault, not ours, thus absolving us of the searing pain of betrayal that we feel: the fact that, at one point, a place, a person, or a relationship, felt like home but no longer does.
The tragedy of spite is that it is so costly. It’s not just any fuel we’re burning, but the deepest, most sacred parts of ourselves. If we think to spite’s opposites, benevolence, goodwill, kindness, we immediately understand the value of those because we know that they require a willing giving of ourselves with gratitude. It is not a self-defeating, pyrrhic sacrifice, but rather a measured giving over: enough kindling and attention to keep the hearth and the home around it warm; or enough to fuel a journey that has a destination in mind. It has a trajectory toward something.
There is always some discomfort in growth. We shed a part of ourselves and move into different spaces with new, raw skin. But the initial discomfort — even if it is a wound — ignite and inspire us to move. They spark a journey, not a conflagration.