.
I do feel resentments occasionally.
Generally, I retreat.
Recently, due to continuing tensions at the Caldera Environment Centre, I've proposed bringing a specialist in to teach Non-Violent Communication, and another person to facilitate a weekly practise group. So far most of the people concerned have expressed interest. It goes to the committee in August.
If I have an issue home with Ari, or he with me, we discuss it. We come to a mutual agreement, and then he forgets it. I am powerless over a poor memory. I have no choice but to learn to accept it and find ways of working around the difficulties.
Your memory is poor hartfire? Typically or atypically? As we age our memories aren't quite as sharp but is this something that has always been part of you or is it recent and troubling to you? I have resentments but usually they are on behalf of others. I don't want to make me sound like a goody goody. I'm not. It's just that most everything just slides right off me. I don't believe in revenge or retaliation. I just let it go. Right now I resent how badly Melania Trump was treated by whomever was responsible for allowing her to give that speech. I resent those who attack the families of political candidates. The family is not running for office. They should be off limits. I resent Donald Trump for the terrible things he has said to and about so many people. He is supposed to be intelligent yet his words are anything but.Thank you for your reply m'dear! :)
I resent a lot of things. When power hungry idiots threaten to usurp life in America as we know it only to make it much worse? I resent that.
If anything, my memory is too good.
I find people who don't remember are much better at forgetting unpleasant experiences.
An example. Many years ago I had a Buddhist monk stay at my place for four months during the Wasser - that's the official duration of the monsoons when all monks are required to take shelter and stay put. I fed him breakfast and lunch everyday, and listened for an hour to his teachings. At the end of the Wasser, it seemed he was reluctant to leave. His health had improved with my food. But I was finding the impact on my life and time was becoming too much for me. Also, someone told me there were rumours about his integrity, that he shouldn't be living at the place of a single woman. I gave him a month to find a new place. Two months later he finally did. At the new place he founded a fund to set up Buddhanet, and he became ropably angry with me when I refused to be a signatory to the bank account. (Monks are not allowed to handle money.)
Thirty years later, he has now founded a monastery not far from where we live. I went to apologise to him for having refused him. He had forgotten that any of it had ever happened! No resentments. Fresh slate. How perfect!
Yet for me, memory is important, because without it we cannot learn.
So the greater skill is to remember and yet still carry no resentments.
I think resentments form when someone does or says something that has a negative effect on us and when we fail to resolve the problem it creates. It happens when we hold in our anger, and hold on to it.
But we can resolve it.
We can talk to the person, mention the action or words, say what we thought and how our thoughts about it made us feel, make a specific request for a change in behaviour and keep talking until we reach an agreement.
Or we can work around the behaviour and find alternative ways to get things done.
Or we can deal with it inside ourselves, by seeking for empathy, to understand how and why the other behaved as they did. I find that when I understand a behaviour, my anger tends to disappear like thistledown on the wind.
I resent the probably-true negative statements people make about me....;-D...
Note: the e-card above is self-directed...;-D...
Thank you for your thoughtful answer hartfire and the real-life examples. I always appreciate those because there is nothing better than getting information "from the horse's mouth" so to speak. You lived it. :)
Thank you for your reply Sharonna.
This is all tongue-in-cheek, correct? I would ask "what specific negative statements are those and how did you find out about them?" Mahalo for your reply OS. The ONLY negative statement anyone ever made to me about you was on Answerbag a few years ago. By email. A friend resented your continued use of calling people stupid or something. I forget exactly what it was but it was your calling card...your schtick . I told her you were a really nice person in real life and she asked why you couldn't be a really nice person on Answerbag. That was
ONE person. So I don't know who all the others are purported to be OS. I know. It's complicated or you were just joking, right? :)
