A Grudge Match

Last night I was going to write one post, but ended up writing another instead. Then today through a comment, I was reminded about the post I was meant to write, so thought that with a glass of weekend wine in hand, I thought I would give it a go again tonight. The post is about holding grudges, and I would like to say that I have always been above this, but I think only recently I have really let it all go. This isn't to say that all is forgiven and forgotten from the past.

I think I grew up in a family of "grudge-holders" on my mother's side, which manifested in multiple ways, but the most obvious was that my mother's siblings were fractured and disconnected, with most not on speaking terms with the others. I think my grandfather (who lived with us) had five children, I only met one uncle a couple times in my life and only know of two cousins, his sons who are much older than me. I don't know what caused all the rifts and never will, but I think that the grudge mindset has been inherited by the next generation too, even if to a lesser extent.

Not being able to speak for my siblings, for me, I am reminded of an old recording I listened to, of a talk where the speaker said that "what you resist, you empower", except with more eloquent words than that. But instead of just throwing out a pithy statement meant to be profound, he dived a little deeper into it and talked of the force used, and gave examples as to how whenever people would come to him as a psychoanalyst, the the only things on their mind, where the things they were trying to stay away from. Similarly, as a Catholic priest, whenever other priests would give confession, it was about sex. The talk was by Anthony De Mello, if interested in searching for it.

Along with many other points through the many hours of the talk, this is one of the things that stuck with me, that it takes energy to hold ourselves back from something and energy to keep something away from us. It is obvious really, because it is physics - it is just applied forces and transference, meaning that when we use force to hold something at bay, we will transfer that energy to it, making it a primary part of our lives. Which is no surprise that so many of the people who are against homosexuality, are constantly thinking about it - but why do they care?

That is another topic.

Back to grudges.

So, I haven't had the easiest of lives by any measure of the stick, but I also haven't really let it affect me too deeply. Yet, there are people throughout my life who have treated me in ways that are unforgivable and I have learned to remove myself from those relationships. However, moving on is one thing, but the grudge can still be held, which means that it consumes energy and because it is a negative force, it doesn't yield positive results, it is all bad.

What would be more valuable is to be able to take the lessons of the experience, but not carry the emotional negativity associated. And that is easier said than done, especially in a world where like I have been saying, we are encouraged to be victims and build our identity around why we can't do something, because of something that has happened to us in the past or, something that happened to our ancestors, whether it be 40, 400, or 4000 years ago.

We inherit a lot from our ancestors genetically, but we also inherit cultural practices, even if they are no longer relevant or useful for the world in which we live. This means that we can end up building the exact situation again, because we are left holding grudges passed down through the family tree and, blaming others who themselves had nothing to do with the past, but because they are part of their tree, are liable.

In the same talk, De Mello told an old joke I liked about politics.

Two neighbors got into an argument about presidential politics:
"Why are you such a dedicated Republican?"
"My Father was a Republican and his father was a Republican - so I am a republican too.
"That's Crazy! What if your Father and Grandfather had been horse thieves?"
"Then I'd be a Democrat."

We inherit a lot from our past, but how do we know what we should keep and what should be discarded? This is especially difficult when we have been raised with these prejudices (we are all influenced somehow) and whenever they get questioned, we automatically get our guard up, because "we" feel attacked, not recognizing that the "attack" is just a conflict with our belief system, which we likely didn't choose for ourselves anyway, making it not really ours.

The other day at lunch I was sitting with two colleagues and talking about the constant fracturing of society through prejudice and I added that inclusion is going the wrong way. One of the guys at the table is quietly gay, but doesn't know that I know. However, I said how when I was young, there were gay people. Then there were lesbians. Then Bi, Trans, Queer..... And what I said, is that inclusion is the wrong way to go, because while people are fighting for their groups inclusion, what they are failing to realize is that they have made their own group exclusive.

Look, we are all on the same sexual spectrum, but where we appear on the line differs from person to person. But, what is common among everyone on that line is, the person component. Rather than creating more definitions, we should be removing definitions instead and find the base platform -which is humanness. This doesn't take away from acknowledging differences and setting various rules for example with sporting competitions, but it puts us all in the same boat, but gives us the space to do as we choose, and still respect others.

We are all living on the same infrastructure.

But, this doesn't satisfy people, because we have been conditioned to be hypersensitive to anything that can be deemed a transgression against us (or anyone really), and the more lines of division there are, the more ways there are to break the rules and therefore, have opportunities to punish others. And, because people are so divided and disconnected from each other, they are largely lonely and bitter, looking for ways to make themselves feel better, which translates into punishing others, even if they did nothing personal in anyway.

Become outraged on the behalf of others.

Which is diminishing in itself, as while it is fine to stick up for injustice, assuming that everyone needs your protection, is belittling and degrading - and prejudiced. It is acting on some stereotyped assumption, treating for example, all black people as oppressed and all white people as privileged. This is something that has annoyed me throughout my life, when "well intentioned" people have injected themselves into conversations where for example a friend of mine is teasing me with a racial epithet, as if I am too stupid to understand that it is an insult - when in actual fact, I recognize it as exactly what it was intended to be - a joke between friends.

Similarly, I dislike it when people who are darker than me believe that "I don't know what it is like" to be teased based on my skin color, because I am lighter than them. I had a Canadian woman say this to me once - and then I told her about my childhood and she discovered that not once in her life had she had those kinds of things said to her.

Holding a grudge for others.

Empathy at work.

As I have mentioned, I argue against empathy, because I believe that it is impossible for us to put ourselves truly in someone else's shoes, and it is highly presumptuous and rude to assume we know how people feel. This doesn't mean that we can't see when someone is suffering and support them - but it doesn't require empathy, it requires compassion. And, the upside of compassion is that it doesn't require having to have any similarities or share feelings with the person at all, all it requires is the ability to identify when help might be required, and offer a hand.

All of this so far has gone well away from the personal side of this for me and into some of the challenges I see facing society, through the beliefs of individuals. As said, we are all prejudiced and what is interesting to note with our grudges, is that the lines that were crossed and why we have a grudge in the first place, might not be our line at all, we have just inherited or accepted it through cultural learning, as if it is something real, relevant and harmful. Yet, how many of us have truly considered our own moral positions at depth and what our limitations really are?

And under different conditions?

Because yes, conditions change and affect our behavior. For example, I was talking to a colleague of mine in France today and he was saying how amazing it is that a person can pick up a flagstone from the road, throw it into the face of a police officer, and argue that it isn't violence. No matter the reason that led to the event,

It is still fucking violence.

When is it justified?

There are times, right? If a person was trying to physically take advantage of my daughter, I would want her to smash that fucker as hard as she can and don't stop until she is certain she is safe. However, if she was getting pulled over for a traffic violation, I wouldn't want her to do the same to get out of a ticket - even if she disagreed with the fine.

As said above, letting go of the grudge, doesn't mean forgiving and forgetting, but rather, accepting that in this world, some people are assholes. But, some people are unknowingly assholes too, where they don't even realize they are crossing a line, which makes them innocent. Sure, they might learn to know better, but even if they should know better, that doesn't mean they don't say stupid things at times.

You know how to eat better? Is it easy for you to stick to a diet?

And, for me at least, I don't want to live in a world where everyone has to tiptoe around each other, out of fear they will offend someone. It is boring, uninspiring, banal and ridiculous - because people should be able to discuss anything without getting so offended that they build a grudge. How mature are we if we hold grudges against people who have said the wrong thing to us? No matter how cruel the intentions may have been, how intelligent are we if we hold a grudge and all it takes for that person to exert their cruelty over us again, is for us to remember them. Rather than forgetting the fool, we are the fool who chooses to remember the pain, over and over - never letting go.

Torturing ourselves.

Shit.

This has become a longer post and wider-ranging than I had initially intended. But, as I let go of the grudges and take even less offence to what happens around me, I feel far better and more open to the world and experience. Letting go is empowering me, because I am no longer using that energy to worry about someone who needn't be in my life, needn't plague my thoughts, needn't leave a mark on my future at all. Other than being an experience in my life I learned from and through it, become a better version of me.

A work in progress.

Taraz
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