Malice

I really love the descriptor "malicious" and it's root word "malice. It means exactly what it intends to and so perfectly describes this thing I can not understand. The prefix "mal" basically means bad. and the end of malicious, "ous" means full of. Malicious is just full of bad. Badful, if you will.

To say I can't understand malice is a misstatement, I get how it comes to exist but from my standpoint it's just incomprehensible. Malice comes from many things, one of the most common being the hopes of increasing self confidence or security through acting out against something or someone else. I consider myself a fairly confident, content, and secure individual so malicious acts just never cross my mind. They're unfathomable to me.

The reason I got to thinking about all this is because of an occurrence the other day. A few of my friends and I were walking together at a large public gathering, chit-chatting and minding our own business. I was wearing plaid shorts. A larger man I would guess to be in his late 20's passes me, points at my shorts and exclaims, "wow dude, nice shorts! nobody's gotten a (expletive deleted) in plaid shorts since... since NAM!" and then continues walking.

I was of course left mystified as I had never seen this man in my life and he was now about 20 feet behind me walking as if nothing had happened. What I could not possibly understand is what motivated this person to randomly insult a stranger on such a trivial subject as fashion. What did he hope to gain from insulting a stranger? Did someone bet him $20 he wouldn't do it? Was he honestly concerned about my sex life based on my attire? I can't find a reason that the thought of insulting a random stranger would seem sensical to me. The only thing that results from his actions are bad things. The act was entirely malicious with absolutely no benevolence. I am always mystified by these things.

I know it sounds like what I am basically saying is, "why can't everyone just be nice?" but what I more truthfully intend to say is how can someone perform an action that is entirely malicious? I understand when someone thinks they are doing something for the good of themselves or someone else and make a malicious mistake, or even when someone is greedy and hurts others so that they benefit. In this situation the malice committer really does not benefit, other than that he can talk about it with his peers or feel slightly better about himself. It's all just incomprehensible to me. This has gotten me thinking about a previous post I did about contributing to the world and I think I will revisit that with another post.

I am not looking to answers about why this person did this and I am not trying to reach out to people to say, "just be nice" because (lets be honest) I personally know all of my reader's and none of them suffer from the troubles of maliciousness. This post is basically just a big, WOW, I can't believe people like that exist and maybe a little bit of, "I should examine things I say and do a little closer to eliminate any malice I have in me"

You don't have to be nice people, but don't be actively mean. Seriously.

ALSO

• I don't believe anybody wore plaid shorts in Vietnam, I think that joke is from Superbad and was either about Camo shorts or Cargo shorts (both of which would make more sense)
• I came up with tons of come-backs about an hour later and was bummed I'm not quicker on the draw
• Who still gives/gets (expletive deleted)'s?