Let
us consider the importance of resentment in our lives, and the damage it
does. Resentment is a great rationalizer, it presents us with
selected versions of our own past, so that we do not recognize our own
mistakes and avoid the necessity to make painful choices.
It is a wonderful
opportunity to rinse out our hearts with resentments that we have
nurtured for sometime and start the year with fresh and abundant love
and compassion. What a wonderful world we have if there are no
resentments among us: between parents and children, among siblings, among friends,
acquaintance, etc.
Resentment is primarily
rooted to our human weakness of self-centeredness which maybe the
result of greed, envy, selfish expectation, search for power, self
importance, and many others.
It is
time to consider forgiveness and compassion. Without
them, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and
retaliation.
My mother taught me years and years ago, that life is just too short to
carry around a great bucket-load of anger, resentment, bitterness, hatred and all that sort of stuff.
Anger will never disappear so long as we cherish thoughts of resentment
in our mind. Anger will subside just as soon as such thoughts of
bitterness are forgotten.
Parents are perhaps the most common object of resentment, the people who
are most frequently blamed for all our failings and failures alike. We
should understand that parents have only good intentions for the welfare
of their children but they also have some limitations.
Yet
many of us ignore their noble intentions and their
limitations due to a range of selfish reasons. We show antipathy,
antagonism, hostility, ill feeling or resentment towards them when we could not longer use nor
dig out something from them.
What a selfish way to show gratitude.
The Lord does
not forget our love, kindness, respect and understanding to our parents.
He does not ignore our
indifference to them either.
Rivalry, jealousy,
greed and envy are another common sources of resentment between/among siblings, relatives
and friends. Resentment creates a wall of animosity between individuals. It
destroys
the bridge of loving relationship that connects people.
When we keep
on harboring ill feelings; when we continue nurturing the bitterness that we
have accumulated and hoarded in our minds like the twin brothers in
following narrative, we allow bitterness to govern our lives and we
throw away years of loving relation with someone we love.
A story
tells of a merchant in a small town who had, identical twin sons. The
boys worked for their father in the department store he owned and, when
he died, they took over the store.
Everything went well until the day a twenty-dollar bill disappeared. One
of the brothers had left the bill on the cash register and walked
outside with a customer. When he returned, the money was gone.
He asked
his brother, "Did you see that twenty-dollar bill on the cash register?"
His brother replied that he had not but the young man kept probing and
questioning. He would not let it alone. "Twenty-dollar bills just don't
get up and walk away! Surely you must have seen it!" There was subtle
accusation in his voice. Tempers began to rise. Resentment set in.
Before long, a deep and bitter gap divided the young men. They refused
to speak.
They
finally decided they could no longer work together and a dividing wall
was built down the center of the store. For twenty years hostility and
bitterness grew, spreading to their families and to the community.
Then one
day a man in an automobile licensed in another state stopped in front of
the store. He walked in and asked the clerk, "How long have you been
here?" The clerk replied that he'd been there all his life. The customer
said, "I must share something with you. Twenty years ago I was 'riding
the rails' and came into this town in a boxcar.
I hadn't eaten for
three days. I came into this store from the back door and saw a
twenty-dollar bill on the cash register. I put it in my pocket and
walked out. All these years I haven't been able to forget that. I know
it wasn't much money, but I had to come back and ask for forgiveness."
The
stranger was amazed to see tears well up in the eyes of this middle-aged
man. "Would you please go next door and tell that same story to the man
in the store," he said. Then the man was even more amazed to see two
middle aged men, who looked very much alike, embracing each other and
weeping together in the front of the store.
After
twenty years, the brokenness was mended. The wall of resentment that
divided them came down.
Lesson to
learn from the story: It is so often little things, like resentments
that finally divide people. And the solution, of course, is to let them
go. There is really nothing particularly profound about it. But for
harmonious, fulfilling and lasting relationship, letting them go is a
must.
When we refuse to carry around bitterness,
we may be surprised at how
much energy we have left for building bonds with those we love.
By
Tim Pedrosa
