Sometimes knowing when to walk away or let something go, is more powerful than hurting someone.
Long story less long:
Guys I knew as teenagers, we were in high school, really shot it out with my homies and I, people really got shot, no one got killed, but houses got shot up, cars got hit, and people. We never swung on each other, it just never happened. He and his boys tried to jack me, multiple times. Called me and tried to threaten me. Blocked numbers, "were going to get you". Typical p*ssy shyt. Dude never even had an issue with me, it was just our crews. If they had cars, we had better ones. If they had girls we had badder ones, or had their's first. If they had drugs, we sold more, we had better. It was just jealousy. This was all when I was like 17.
I vividly remember being in my homies car, stunting on these guys, and he walks up, kinda tries to swing on me, and I was thinking I should just get out an stab this dude. Had a knife in my hand. And I just told my homie to drive, forget this loser.
All that to say, it was a real issue, but it was all over NOTHING. Started over nothing. Girls. Money. Who fukked this girl or that girl?. So about three years later, I end up in the same halfway house as this guy, and we ended up talking and being cool. Didn't change what happened, but that wasn't the time or place for any issues. We talked and smoked cigs together, we never had a problem. He had respect for me, and I was in a position to help him, so we were cool, this was like 6 months, living in close quarters.
Another 4 years later, we end up in the same corner in a club district, I'm with two of my boys, two goons, bigger than me and him. He's with some weasel who is a non factor. I say whats up? And we both kind of eye each other, I say so what do you want to do? He looks at me like "it's whatever", and I say, "if we can be cool at the halfway house, we can be cool out here", and we just shook hands, and parted ways.
Years later, he died, so that's just how it goes sometimes.