Who's got your goat?

Darien River; GA

“Resentment is the number one offender . . . . From it stems all forms of spiritual disease. . .”  -  William Wilson

“The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”  -  Ghandi

     Resentment is defined as indignation at having been treated unfairly.  Synonyms include grudge, animosity, annoyance, malice, rage and wrath.  The bottom line is that it means we are angry about something that is already over.  Someone else has rent-free space in our head and we either cannot or will not get rid of the mental obsession.  Some are less pervasive than others – perhaps we only remember being angry at someone once a year – perhaps when we put the Christmas tree up.  Or, in my case in one instance, I had one against a guy with the name Raven.  Every time I saw a black bird I was angry.  And, being a photographer, I see a lot of black birds.

     Holding a grudge brings all manner of chain of thought on.  One is plotting revenge.  We may go through elaborate scenarios in our mind about how we are going to exact our revenge.  Or, perhaps every time we think of it we bring up our own list of short-comings and beat ourselves up for being so gullible/dumb/incompetent – or whatever.  Maybe we replay the incident back over in our head time after time, pretending that figuring out how we could have done something different will change where we are at today.  It may bring on feelings of jealousy, loathing, hostility, self-pity – the list goes on, and it includes nothing good.  And the truth of the matter?  All of our mental gymnastics are not hurting the other person at all – in fact they probably don’t even have us cross their mind.  Holding these things in is like swallowing poison and expecting that it is going to hurt someone else.

     All of the sages through history have told us that the first step to freedom is to forgive.  They do not say to forgive only those transgressions that were minor, or to learn to mentally block out the thoughts, or to only forgive those that have some redeeming qualities – they say to forgive.  There are lots of ways to go about forgiving others – whole books are written on the subject.  But how doesn’t matter as long as we do it.  And we will be amazed at how much more mental space we have free when we do it fully.  Who can we truly forgive today?  Let’s start lightening the load and be sure we don’t take any new garbage on.

Today, may I be kind to myself.

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Have a great Thursday !!

David