Revenge on Your Mind
The True Meaning of Revenge Fantasies
The Endless Fight
Have you ever lied awake at night, playing out the perfect revenge in your mind? The line that shuts her up. The punch that drops him cold. The moment when everyone finally realizes you were the one with the real strength all along. It’s not random—it’s a ritual. Pain becomes your ink, and revenge is the image you tattoo into your memory. You’ll carry that image until the vow it burns into you is fulfilled.
In fact, it feels good to picture yourself turning the tables. For about five seconds. Then it starts again. Same scene, same fire in your chest that doesn’t go anywhere. You’ve felt it. The racing thoughts during the day. The restless nights. The constant tension in your jaw and your grip. And when the fire burns out, you’re left with the taste of ashes in your mouth. Alone. Bitter. Exhausted.
Time passes. And you start to notice how replaying the revenge scene is wearing you down. You win the fight with them a thousand times in your head. And in the moment, you feel like you’re gathering power you will unleash one day. But the moment the bad guy is in front of you, you don’t swing. You swallow. You go home still burning. The lion broods in the cage, then performs his act when the ringleader cracks the whip.
And that’s not even the biggest anomaly. You can feel how resentment is changing you. You spend so much time and energy imagining yourself doing the same thing to them as they did to you. Then you look in the mirror and can’t shake the thought: Am I slowly becoming like the person I hate?
If you’re not feeling the pain yet, then go no further. But if you’re ready to understand the true meaning of revenge fantasies, then listen to this story—about a lion in a cage.
The Lion in a Cage
Once there was a lion. He lived in the great plains where the sun warmed his back, and every breath of air felt like drawing in the world around him. He crouched low in the brush, copying the elders, and his heart beat fast not only from the thrill of the hunt, but from belonging to the pride.
But one day, he was captured by humans and taken far, far away. He was trapped in strange cage of metal and concrete, and it was hard to tell if it was day or night sometimes. His pride was nowhere to be found. Instead, he found himself in the hands of people who fed him only when he obeyed commands. So he learned to understand what they wanted, obey, and perform.
When the lion was old enough and completed his training, he was sold to the circus. Now he performed under the lights, with thousands of eyes fixed on him. One night, as he prepared himself to leap over the pit and then took his first strides, he suddenly felt the crack of the whip across his face. Shocked, he froze. Had he done something wrong? What was he supposed to do now?
“Look at the ladies and gentlemen! The king of the jungle. You can almost hear his brain working… too bad there’s nothing in there!” The ringleader said. And everyone laughed at him.
That night he was a given an even smaller portion of scraps to eat and kept in the cage for longer. Apparently, he didn’t even know “how to perform right.”
The lion wanted to rip the ringmaster’s throat out. He began to picture it, replaying the moment in his mind again and again. He saw the audience screaming, the master helpless, begging for mercy. He could feel his power coming back, and his dignity. Surely, he would show everyone who the real ringmaster was.
The next day, the lights fell on him, and everyone watched as the ringmaster summoned him. He was sick of holding in his feelings and pretending. He didn’t leap forward like before. He remained in his cage, refusing to move.
The master’s eyes narrowed. He leaned in with a look of smug confidence, “Well, well,” he said, loud enough for the front row to hear. “Perhaps we should just finish you off before you cost our establishment any more money.”
And for a moment, the lion didn’t think. He didn’t blink. He just sat there, unmoving. The crowd leaned forward, sensing something off-script. Meanwhile, the lion’s mind flooded with images—the master’s blood on the floor. The cage wrecked forever. The audience screaming, not with laughter, but with fear. The tent torn to shreds. It was finally time to make it happen. In fact, maybe it was now or never. He leaped forward and sank his teeth into the ringmasters face, as he rotated his head in circles, turning him into a useless plaything.
Crack! The whip flashed and the fantasy broke. “Get up!” the master barked, still alive and in charge, as the crowd erupted in cheers. And the lion obeyed. As he always had. But this time… it wasn’t the same. His steps were tired and heavy. His eyes lifeless. His roar empty. He moved because he had to, but inside, something was breaking.
That night, as the lion lay awake in the empty arena, a bird landed on his cage. The lion ignored him. But then the bird unlocked his cage and just sat there, looking at him. “What do you want?” the lion asked, annoyed.
“There’s no trick. You can walk free. Go back to your family and be happy.”
“You think I’m going to run away like a coward?” the lion roared, “I will get my dignity back by taking revenge, and then I will return to the wild.”
“You refuse to let him crush your spirit.” the bird replied, “And I respect that. But who are you hurting? The ringmaster is sleeping soundly while you lay here in agony.”
“Exactly!” the lion replied, “That’s why I have to even the odds.”
“And once you take an eye for an eye, then you will be just like him,” the bird replied, “the very person you despise. But what will that do for you? You will still be far from home, and a stranger from the person you used to be.”
“Easy for you to say, you naïve weakling!” the lion replied, “You would feel the same way if you had an experience at all.”
“I was born in a cage, trained to perform, and they pulled my feathers out as a reward” said the bird. “I planned my revenge. I waited for years, until the day I realized who I really am—not a victim, but a guide to protect the animals. I flew free, and now I save others. This is your chance. Not to remain a slave to this circus. But not to become a monster like your captors either. This is your chance to walk free and go back home to protect the other lions from being captured.”
“Walk free?” the lion barked. “So you can alert the master and have me killed?”
The bird looked him in the eyes and asked him on last question, “If I did, would that be worse than what you’re living through now?”
And then he disappeared into the night.
The next day, when it was time to perform, the lion noticed how short the master stood, how easily the crowd changed tunes, and how the door was still wide open. He wasn’t sure what had kept him contained all these years, because it certainly wasn’t physical. So he stood and said, “I’m leaving.”
The master turned. Then smiled. With a crack of the whip, he struck the lion across the face. “You think you’re free, beast? You’re nothing. You’ll be free the day you give up your life just to pay your debt to me.”
The lion walked closer.
The master leaned in. “Come on then. You want it, don’t you? All these years, planning. Scheming. Just take it. Show them the evil monster you are.”
The lion looked up, and stepped forward, one slow paw at a time, heart pounding like a war drum.
And then—he stopped.
He saw the crowd.
He saw the flash of fear in their eyes, the murmurs—“Man-killer… danger… destroy him.”
He saw the future. His head hanging on someone’s wall.
And for the first time, he asked himself: What do I want? To react out of pain and indignation, or to reclaim the person I used to be, even if that means death?
The lion turned. He didn’t roar. He didn’t strike. He didn’t explain.
He just walked out. Calm. Powerful. Dignified.
The master screamed behind him, spit flying, voice cracking. “Coward! Come back and fight! You’re nothing without me!”
But the lion didn’t turn. He returned to his home, not as the naïve cub he once was, but as one who had seen cages and broken them. The crowd forgot him. The master replaced him. But somewhere, deep in the wild, a lion walked free again. And that was enough.
Just like the Lion
Just like the lion, you’ve been taken insulted and mistreated. And it’s true. An eye for an eye will even the score. I’m not going to tell you that’s immoral. Just be ready to pay the price.
If they retaliate, be ready to follow up strike-for-strike for as long as it takes to win. And if staying in the fight gets you hurt more, then give up both your eyes, and even life itself—instead of walking away, as you would say, like a coward.
You’re locked into this fight. So your every move is a reaction to theirs, and you have to follow that rule even if it means death or an endless fight. You have no choice but to pay this price.
Maybe you’re waiting until the perfect moment comes, when you know you can win. And in the meantime, you’re picturing the triumph in your mind. That’s also an option. Just make sure you’re ready for the possibility they’ll keep you waiting forever. And if waiting means you have to keep the fire of resentment burning in your mind, make sure you’re ready to spend the rest of your life consumed with thoughts of them—instead of forgetting, as you would say, like a coward.
You’re locked into this fight. So you will spend your life waiting for the opportunity to strike, if that’s what it takes. You have no choice but to pay this price.
Whether you’re fighting with your fists or your thoughts, you can’t step out of the arena until you’ve gotten your revenge. Even if the door is wide open, you don’t have the choice to leave. Even if waiting is hurting you and not them, you cannot forget.
The Invisible Shackles
You’ve felt the costs of this fight already. But there’s still a reason why you’re locked into it despite all the pain it causes. There’s still something unresolved that keeps you coming back, day after day.
It’s the unresolved gap…
Between how you deserve to be treated…
…and the way they laughed at your suffering.
This unresolved gap is what makes it feel impossible to “move on.”
And it’s based a belief that boils down to this:
“My dignity depends on them getting what they deserve. And if society won’t do its job, then I will.”
There it is. No poetry, no philosophy. Just raw conviction. And when you hold that belief, you can feel absolutely certain that it’s true. It was their fault. They’re wrong. And if they won’t fix it, then they deserve to be taught a lesson.
Since you’re absolutely certain about this, you have no choice but to risk everything in the campaign against your enemy. You have no choice but to sacrifice your safety, your mental health, your future, and even your identity, if that’s what it takes. You have no choice but to make your identity into a permanent victim and avenger. You have no choice but to give your time and attention to hurting them, rather than connecting with the people who wish you well.
Look, I’m not asking you to deny the gap between what they did what should have done. I’m not here to give you naïve lectures in theoretical morality. But there is a reason why you’re here, and it’s because you’ve seen the glitches in your own reality. And you want to know what they mean.
You look in the mirror and see it—the same thoughts, the same impulses, the same fire that once burned in the person you hate. Their shadow stares back at you. And you wonder: how do you get even without becoming like them?
You lie awake at night, burning with righteous indignation. You can feel what it’s doing to your body, your peace, your mind. But what is it doing to them? Nothing. And you wonder: how do you leave the arena without feeling like a coward?
That’s why you’re here. Not because you need a lecture. Not because you don’t have valid reasons to be resentful. But because you’ve hit the breaking point and you’re waking up to the fact that this isn’t working anymore. You’re open to consider another way, as long as it makes sense. You’re searching for a way to break free of the invisible shackles that keep you stuck, without having to rewrite the truth in their favor.
The Best Revenge
There might be part of you that wants to leave the arena, but what about the justice gap? Are you supposed to let them crack you in the face and tell jokes while everyone laughs?
The purpose of revenge is to get even. This is definitely better than lying to yourself by pretending they were right. But there’s another kind of revenge that doesn’t require you to pretend they were right.
The best revenge is when you refuse to lower yourself down to the level of your enemy. Because their wrongdoing degraded them. It didn’t degrade you. And if you don’t stop needing them to suffer like you did, it will end up hurting you more than they ever did.
When you accept these difficult truths, the invisible shackles start to loosen. You thought their actions brought your dignity into question, and you needed to prove them wrong. But now, you no longer believe that their actions determine your dignity, and therefore, and you realize their actions don’t define who you are today.
This realization begins to close the justice gap, and this, give you some closure. You stop identifying yourself as a wrongful victim. You break free from the tight knot of emotional reactivity. You stop replaying the same awful scenarios day after day in your mind. And you stop letting the acid of resentment eat away at you.
Instead, you begin to reclaim yourself: to set boundaries, heal, and move on. You stop living as their victim, and start living as yourself again.
From Avenger to Protector
You told yourself what they did was an insult. But you refused to admit it hurt you personally. You wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. Instead, you played the avenger and won a thousand fights in your mind. Fists clench. Teeth grind. The punch lands, the jaw snaps back, the body drops cold.
But underneath all the drama and philosophy is a silence. The silence of the child you used to be—the one who walked the world carefree. Then you were misled, taken advantage of, insulted, and abused. And you learned not to trust people. You refused to be a victim, so you became an avenger instead. You built walls and found weapons. You stayed in your cage. You planned your ultimate revenge. But while you were busy trying to undo the wrongs of others, the wounds of your inner child never stopped bleeding. That child was abandoned not only by others, but also by you—just so you could survive.
Now the invulnerable walls, the avenger role, the fire that once kept you alive are having the opposite effect of what you accepted them for. They’re preventing you from acknowledging the ways you’ve been not just wronged—but hurt. And until you can acknowledge the hurt, it’s impossible to heal.
The moment you’re really waiting for isn’t when your enemy finally collapses. It’s when you no longer need them to. Your dignity was never determined by how they treated you. And your healing doesn’t have to wait until they are defeated or proven wrong.
That doesn’t mean you need to naïvely surrender. No. You’re called to a different role altogether: the dignified role of a protector. To stand guard over your inner child and not abandon him again. To give him the care and safety no one else did. To walk away from toxic relationships and set healthy boundaries that say, “never again.”
That’s the beginning of your real healing, and the proof of your strength. Not the strength of an avenger—who buries his vulnerability, lives in reaction, and takes pleasure in planning to harm; but the strength of a protector—who uses that strength for good because he knows who he is, independent of his enemies, and he protects himself and others. Step into this role, and you can walk free while knowing this is courage. First you heal yourself, and then you protect others from what you went though. And this gives you honor, purpose, and meaning.
Restoring Justice
First you suffer an injustice yourself. Then you watch abusers walk free, victims get shamed and bystanders remain silent. And it undermines your trust not just in specific wrongdoers, but in the whole world. It makes you ask: Why don’t people stand up for what’s right? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? You wonder if the world nothing more than power crushing the weak. Because if destiny doesn’t clearly punish the wrongdoers, and the world rewards them—then reality itself feels like a betrayal.
You feel offended because if you give loyalty or respect, you expect it in return. When people reciprocate, the bond deepens, trust grows, and you feel seen. But when they don’t give back, the same instinct twists into the desire for revenge—you want to hurt them, to teach them not to break the rule. This is how human society works.
You are right. People should reciprocate. But sometimes they don’t. So you have to talk to them about it, and expect an apology before the relationship can be restored to what it should be. Still, sometimes they don’t care! In that case, it no longer makes sense for you to expect much of them either. You’re the only one who’s suffering by making your peace of mind dependent on a careless person apologizing. It’s a trap.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t hold people accountable. You just have to leave the execution of justice to a higher power, and be willing to accept the outcome. Go to the authorities, report the facts, and use the legal system to pursue justice. Just don’t make your peace of mind dependent on getting the verdict you think is right, because that’s giving your own personal power away.
When human justice fails, the law of karma takes over. But karma doesn’t always pay out instantly, or from the same person you gave to. Sometimes you give more than you receive in one relationship, but you receive more than you ever gave in another. So when suffering comes, consider that it may be the return of some past mistake. And when blessings come, consider them the fruit of past goodness. You may not see the exact connections now, but you can trust they exist. Over the span of a lifetime—and even across lifetimes—the scales balance. Justice is woven into the fabric of reality, even if we can’t always trace the thread. And that’s the way God made the universal justice system.
You may not control when or how the scales of justice balance, but you always control the quality of your own choices. No one can take that from you. So since you care about justice, create it in your own choices. Even if it’s not reciprocated exactly according to your expectations, you can still trust that it counts. That’s where your freedom begins—not in revenge, not in waiting for apologies, but in living with integrity. Because human justice may falter, but divine justice never fails.
Conclusion
Somehow, it’s in everyone’s fate to encounter at least one awful person in this world. And sometimes, you didn’t know any better than to hope they would reward your sincerity, or even play an important role in your life. The rude awakening to their true nature that comes when they betray you. It crushes your hopes and ideals, and makes you feel humiliation and shame.
You can call this experience the knife point. The moment it touches your vulnerable flesh, you’re left with a wound.
From here, there are two directions you can go:
You can turn toward anger or resentment. These feelings cover up your vulnerability from further harm. But because you’ve judged that what happened should not have happened, your mind can’t let it go. It works day and night to find closure—by replaying the injury, rehearsing revenge, or imagining recognition. Each time you remember the offense, your mind is dragged across the knife point again. In this way, resentment binds you to suffering and perpetuates the damage. That’s why it’s called re-sentiment: the re-feeling, the re-living, the re-opening of the wound.
You can turn toward healing the wound itself. Instead of circling endlessly around the offense, you allow yourself to face the helplessness, the grief, and the humiliation that you felt. And you meet those feelings with compassion and courage, or you find someone who can help you with this. You don’t excuse what was done, or pretend it wasn’t wrong. But you stop resisting the fact that it did happen, and no amount of replaying can undo it. Slowly, you learn from the experience—so the wound doesn’t just close, but it teaches you how to guard your sincerity without abandoning it.
After you face your pain, you no longer need blame to distract you from the unresolved pain you used to feel. You stop believing their actions define your worth. You stop believing they must suffer before you can heal. And you recognize that justice is entrusted to society and providence—not to you, and not to your restless mind.
As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita (6.23):
“Understand freedom to be that state which severs the connection with suffering.”
When the knot that once bound you to the knife point is undone, the trauma is resolved. And you’re finally free to return to yourself—not as the naïve soul who once believed everyone would honor your sincerity, but as one who has seen cages and broken them. The world may forget. The wrongdoer might live on.
But somewhere, deep in the wild,
a lion walks free again. And that is enough.