Resentment only hurts those who are angry

I’ve been sitting here thinking about a recent  experience. I was walking through a store, and I heard some of the saddest words a human being can say. A young woman, in her early 40s, was talking to a friend and said, “I will never forgive him as long as I live.”

This was said as a curse on the person she felt had wronged her. Instead, she had just pronounced a curse on herself. I was somewhat surprised to hear her say that the person she was resenting had been dead for 20 years but she was determined to keep punishing him, or so she thought.

The word resentment is an interesting one. It comes from a Latin word “sentire” which means, “to feel.” Re-sentire means to re-feel, or feel again.

Even though the target of the young woman’s resentment was dead, she was keeping him alive in her thoughts and mind, by re-feeling what had transpired between them. It would take only a sound, a smell, a song, a picture, or reference to the person, for her to start stirring the pot of resentment. She had turned her life over to this person she so intensely disliked.

The strange thing is the person she was resenting knew nothing about it, because he was dead. Even if he had been alive, he still would not have known what was going on.

The only person changed by resentment is the person doing the resenting. The person being resented has no idea what is transpiring. They are going on with their life, and they are either happy or sad, or whatever they choose to be. The life of the resenter is changed by bitterness, headaches, backaches, stomach trouble, and certain types of arthritis. When I resent someone I am only destroying myself, sometime rapidly, sometime slowly.

There is an antidote for resentment and that is forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood concepts. We often feel that we are doing the other person a favor if we forgive them. Forgiveness is for the one holding on to the resentment, not the target. When I forgive someone, the resentment goes away, and I am a free person again.

There is an old saying, “Nothing can be cut so thin that there are not two sides to it.” If I have negative feelings toward another person, I must be able to see how I was involved in what took place. The only thing I can do anything about is my side. I cannot change the other person, I cannot make them behave, and I certainly cannot bring them back to life to do things differently. To look at my side of a situation gives me a chance to change me, and that is my responsibility.

I have a few suggestions for all of us who have resentments, now and then. If we have been resenting someone, we might consider inviting that person to move in with us. After all, they have been living with us, and getting free emotional room and board, for some time. If they are physically present, we could at least yell at them or throw eggs at them. Better yet, we could forgive them, move them out, and get on with living our life.

Another guaranteed way of ridding ourselves of resentment is to go to the person we dislike, and ask forgiveness for our feelings toward them. We are not to say anything about what they have done, but to own up to the fact that we have resented them, and to say we are sorry. This sounds hard, and it is if our ego gets in the way. The payoff will be the death of the hate that has been eating away at us.

A sure way of liberating ourselves of resentment is to pray for the so-and-so. (I am being polite — you add your own words.) I used to think that I was only to pray for the people I loved, or the people who agreed with me. I don’t think we will get any Brownie points for that kind of prayer — it’s easy. We are to pray that all good things will happen to them and for their happiness on this earth. I can assure you that it is impossible to resent a person if we sincerely pray for them. This may be hard, but not nearly as hard as keeping the feelings of hatred alive.