I love resentment. I didn’t always. In fact, resentment just might be the nastiest, well-entrenched elephant in my cranial vault. In Little League I once got thrown out trying to steal home, and I probably held a grudge against that blind ump until well after I had my own Little Leaguer. That’s just one example. I’ve got a wearhouse of them. A lot of us do, I suspect.
I don’t know how many people resentment actually kills, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a major cause of chronic unhappiness. It’s certainly the cause of much of the unhappiness I’ve known. And because of that, it has become one of my best teachers. Its business card reads: Deal or Suffer: the ticket to joy.
The sun shines equally on a diamond and hunk of coal, sages say, but only the diamond sparkles. In a given moment, resentment turns the diamond we really are into the equivalent of coal.
The reasons aren’t mysterious. Resentment is the opposite of expansion, pliancy, delight, compassion, kindness, joy, humor, gratitude, forgiveness, et cetera––all those qualities that help us respond well to whatever comes our way. Resentment is a barbed-wire thread wound through our days in the form of pain we are unable or unwilling to free.
And it is particularly harmful since its source is so often some mix of two really crazy-deep habits:
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- A searing memory we carry with us and, for who knows what perverse reason, revisit again and again, like picking a scab––each time eliciting a snakebite of bitterness. We didn’t get the parents we deserved, or at least wanted, and we’ve been pissed about it ever since. That sort of thing.
- We allow our imagination to be a terrorist. We’re right there with Mark Twain, who said something like: “I’ve been the victim of every sort of despicable unkindness a person could ever imagine, none of which ever happened.”
I find these two pirates of peace impossible to dislodge without an outrageous commitment to changing the way I think, a fanatical hunger for a gentle heart, and the willingness to waltz with porcupines if that’s what the curriculum demands.
It was years ago I heard that wonderful reminder––The spiritual life can tolerate anything but resentment. But it seems like only yesterday that my heart was finally soft enough to actually experience how every resentment is a form of suicide.
The practices that help me retrain my mind––which include forgiveness: letting go of past pain and hatred––are strengthened by such an intense reminder of what’s at stake.
So is being old enough that Little League is out of the question.
Hi Steve
A great topic written so well. I always enjoy your “ two cents” . I seem to read them on Sunday AM such a nice way to way to start the week.
Thank You
Sheila Arel Lowe
“I’ve been the victim of every sort of despicable unkindness a person could ever imagine, none of which ever happened.” Mark Twain
It seems like only yesterday that my heart was finally soft enough to actually experience how every resentment is a form of suicide.
Steve, one of the hardest lessons is to realize that all the inner babbling and rage we project about and onto others – we are doing to ourselves, which, of course is your point. Even the concept of forgiveness gets caught in this web. We don’t forgive trespasses that were done unto us. We release ourselves from reincarnating the trespass every time the nagging ghost-pain pops out of the box. Forgiveness is an act of compassion first for our often self-inflected suffering. And true compassion, being a transcendent state where the ego cannot roam, forgiveness is for the pain and suffering that others do onto themselves when trespassing. Forgiveness does not make the trespass right. What is done is done. Life is always in the present. Can we experience compassion now? That is the real challenge.
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