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What is so satisfying about teaching someone a lesson, especially when we believe they deserve it?

We tell ourselves that we are showing them what happens when they disrespect us, ignore us, hurt us, or take us for granted. So we deliberately become difficult. We withhold, provoke, embarrass, or behave badly, believing that our response will teach them something.

But there is a problem.

If you have to become the very thing you are trying to teach someone not to be, what exactly have you taught?

I call this borrowed morality.

We condemn someone's behaviour, then justify our own because we believe they started it. We demand respect while deliberately being disrespectful. We criticise spite while using spite as a weapon and sometimes, the lesson backfires spectacularly.

The person you intended to teach may learn nothing at all. Instead, everyone watching learns something about you.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is not teaching people how their behaviour affects others.

It is demonstrating, through your own behaviour, what you expect from them.

Because when you teach a lesson through cruelty, the lesson may be remembered, but so will the teacher and sometimes, the person trying to prove a point becomes the point.