A word of warning: This post contains explicit descriptions of acts which we all are aware of, we all have been known to enjoy and we all have felt shame and guilt for said enjoyment.
The topic today?
Justice Boners.
I get serious justice boners. It's a funny turn of phrase that best describes the feeling that we have when our inflated need for fairness and justice gives us a sense of relief and satisfaction. The reason this phrase is so appropriate is because the phrase, like the feeling itself, is juvenile, petty and, in most circumstances, lacks a standard of class and civility.
I don't use the word "boner" on a regular basis. I find it crass and low-brow... the cornerstone of poorly made 80's movies featuring overly-endowed women in skimpy outfits. I find it offensive. Equally, I should question my constant desire for said justice boner, mostly because I want to think it's beneath me.
But here I stand, admitting that I love a good justice boner. I love when I see justice served up before me. I enjoy when a person I think is good and right is rewarded, and I leap with joy when I see a person I perceive as bad and wrong getting smacked down by either a system or by 'karma'. I want that guy who let me merge in while in heavy traffic to have the road open before him, and I want to see the guy who cut me off with a flat tire 10 minutes later.
I want fairness to be real and I long for the ability to bend the universe in such a way that fairness is real. But alas, fairness is not real. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. My longing for a justice boner gives me a (false) sense of control in a world full of chaos.
The worst of this comes when you know that the best course of action is to rise above it all. When you are personally wronged, the desire to bend the universe into smack-down mode is strong. So, your desire to seek out justice... to scream truth from the rafters... to expose the wrongness of the wrong.... it's alluring. Oh so alluring!
But, there is another side to it. Like the phrase itself, justice boners are juvenile and lack civility. There is a side that requires you to act above the fray. The side where you need to understand that dirty people hope to make themselves look clean by making you look dirtier... and that the only way free from that is to play clean. The right thing to do is to stay clean from it... walk away with only the satisfaction of knowing that you are allowing the truth to stand for itself and hope that the universe makes it right on its own.
But we know that the universe is an unreliable narrator.
Uncertainty is kryptonite to a person who enjoys justice boners and the universe is filled with uncertainty. I have never witnessed a guy who cut me off getting a flat tire... and while I can't dismiss that it has happened, I know that I can't lay down nails on the highway in front of him. That's not playing clean.
It's an awful feeling- this uncertainty and making a choice to not be involved in ensuring justice and fairness. When even 'defending' yourself is playing dirty and you have to hope that the truth is screamed by someone else's voice from someone else's rafters.
There is a cost to playing clean. I may never get the justice boner I desire and instead I have to be satisfied by the fact that I (silently) know I did the right thing....
...but civil-adult-decision-to-be-better-than-that-Boner just doesn't have the same ring to it.
