I want to say a few words about the care and feeding of resentments. Why do I work so ceaselessly to convince myself (and others) that a resentment is justified? It has the same corrosive effect on my enjoyment of life whether justified or not.
I do it because nothing reaffirms my sense of nobility quite as strongly as a good, justified resentment. Whether it is the flaming variety or merely smoldering, it spreads warmth an sometimes even exhilaration.
You see, I am right and the other guy is wrong. That knowledge nourishes my self-esteem. So whenever the fires of my resentment simmer down, I toss another log on the coals to be sure I keep it alive. I review and make notes from time to time of the specifics of the resentee's injurious behavior.
Occasionally anger craves action. But there seem to be only two courses open to me: practice the "honesty" part of the program by telling the resentee just what's wrong with him, or keep it to myself and keep the fires burning.
The former course would probably lead to an angry confrontation that I shrink from handling. The latter course would result in the fires spreading eventually to other aspects of my consciousness and behavior--even to unrelated areas. I can't seem to find any way to build a fire break that will permanently confine the flames of a resentment to its specific object.
Eventually, I become so uncomfortable that I have to do something about it.
But what to do?
First of all, I must face the fact that the resentment process is not only fruitless, it is self-defeating. Justified or not, the resentment, and my efforts to bolster its justification, will eat away at my peace of mind and my enjoyment of life.
Meanwhile, the person I resent couldn't care less. Here I am burning myself to a crisp over something he or she may not even be totally aware of, something I can't change. At the root of my resentment is compulsion to change things I cannot change--to wit, another person. So maybe what I need do is to take a look at changing myself.
When we first come around AA, we're urged to do just what we are told. We might not like it, we might not even agree with it; just do it. When the action get the predicted result, we're astonished and sometimes a little annoyed. But almost against our will, we come to understand and believe. We've never been able to achieve these ends by just thinking, but our action and its results can open the door to understanding and belief.
So maybe the thing to do about my resentment is to act.
But act how?
I was told to act "as if."
That seems to call for selling myself on two points:
1) In the long run I will feel better if I can get rid of the resentment. But what about the fact that I'm right? That brings me to point two.
2) Over time I can feed my ego and feel even more righteous by shedding the resentment than by concentrating on how right I am. Now I can ponder on how noble I am to have gotten rid of the resentment and to be treating the resentee on a "Do-unto-others basis." In brownie points, generosity ranks above rightness any day in the week.
So, there's the carrot. I will feel better if I can give myself credit for being generous.
But how do I go about being that way?
Here are several actions I am trying to take. To some extent, they seem to be working.
1) In many cases the resentments are traveling under aliases with passports bearing such names as "hurt feelings," "ungratefulness," and "honest desire" to set the record straight. Now is the time for unmasking the aliases. Is the real identity of the resentment perhaps "wounded ego," "self-pity," or "territorial imperative"? By any chance, is it caused by the fact that I did something that I felt was kind, thoughtful, or unselfish for the resentee, and he is not reacting with adequate appreciation? If so, I must ask God to help me remember that anything I do with the label "kind," "thoughtful," or "unselfish" I do because it makes me feel better to do it than not to do it. How can I demand gratitude for something I did to make myself feel better?
2) I try to understand how the resentee feels. What makes him do the things I resent? Are they intended to hurt me or are they in response to some inner compulsion of his own? Rarely do I find that the injurious action was designed to hurt me. Rather it is usually in answer to the pressure within the resentee. This concept helps me to take some of the edge off the resentment.
3) I must initiate some friendly contact with the resentee-whatever would have been a normal contact if there were no resentment. I try to act as if the resentment didn't exist.
4) Regardless of the reaction I get, I must pause and enjoy the fact that I made an effort to overcome the resentment.
When my wife who has been in AA for years, read to this point in the manuscript, she suggested a fifth idea. She said, "Instead of asking God for help to erase the resentment, thank him for helping. Thank him in advance and thank him afterward. That sort of puts your commitment on the line." Good advice.
So has any of this worked for me? Not always and not totally. But I am enjoying life a lot more than when I first set out on this course. Because of my actions an attitude, the resentee is giving me less and less cause for my resentment. Far more important, I have no need to justify my feelings by tending and refueling the resentment. With no fuel, the resentment slowly burns out and I begin to be free.
I hate to admit it, but AA is right again.
And now, gentle reader, one final word. You probably assume that I wrote this in the spirit of sharing. Not so. I wrote it in the ardent hope from time to time I will read this piece myself.
from AA Grapevine, August 1991, B.F.P., Vero Beach, Florida &
The Best of the Grapevine, volume 3
On the slope of Long's Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of a gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the course of its long life it was struck by lighting fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanches an storms of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by their tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, not lighting blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and his thumb. Aren't we like that battling giant of the forest? Don't we manage somehow to survive the rare storms and avalanches and lighting blasts of life, only to let our hearts be eaten out by resentments?