What if You Need Their Help in the Future?
Burning a bridge is generally unwise, which we discussed some time ago that one should simmer their bridges. There will always be individuals that you don’t really need or perhaps dislike for whatever reason. But telling them off or blatantly severing connections is not advisable due to the fact that no one really knows the future.
What if you need them at a later date? It would be awfully embarrassing to ask someone for help if you had recently (or not so recently) instigated a fuel with them now wouldn’t it? And more then likely they won’t help you because they are still angry with you.
How to Win Allies
Now having set that aside, when should you burn a bridge? Well it should be done in a very surgical manner to start with and after having put much thought into it. One must be certain without a reasonable doubt that such a person will not be needed in the future as there being something to be gained for burning that bridge. And if for some reason that person would be useful in the future, one must accept the fact that they will not help you and be willing to live with it as an effect of a previous action. So then, having determined that such an individual will not be needed and accepting the likelihood that they will not help if perchance they were to be needed, what should one look to gain by burning a bridge?
Well here is one benefit: a show of strength. Because human nature tends to be very opportunistic as many whom have traveled to an area where they are obviously out of town can attest to. Human beings inherently smell weakness and many prey on it. But if one were to target an individual and destroy them utterly in the figurative or physical sense, it shows that you are not to be trifled with, and many will back off.
To put it another way, if you bloody a bully, even if you are bloodied yourself, it wins respect and with it, who knows, perhaps even allies.
Kingston S. Lim
17th September 2022
Lagos, Nigeria
Kingston S. Lim 