Festering grudges

Do I bear grudges or don't I? It depends how you define it. The dictionary says it's a feeling of persistent ill-will towards someone. But to my mind that's just an everyday feeling and nothing unusual. Surely we all feel ill-will towards certain people because they're rude or obstructive or bad-tempered or needy? So what?

I think ill-will only becomes a grudge when it turns into obsessive, irrational, all-consuming hatred, or when there's also a desire to get revenge on the person, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Then you're no longer talking about an everyday feeling but something abnormal and unhealthy.

I've often felt persistent ill-will towards somebody, but it never develops into something obsessive or magnified. Dislike is enough for me, I don't need to build it up into something huge and grotesque. For one thing, I don't the energy for such intensity. It's too exhausting.

I guess grudges are usually driven by anger, and I'm not an angry person. If someone's pissing me off, I don't get enraged, I just look for a way of dealing with their obnoxious behaviour. Or I keep away from them.

Some grudges result from a failure to get something you dearly wanted, and the conclusion that you were unfairly treated. You fail to get that prestigious job you were after, and you're convinced the interview panel was biased against you. Thus a grudge is born and lasts for decades, based solely on an unproven belief. I've never had that sort of grudge either.

I've known men with a severe grudge against a woman who wouldn't go out with them, or abruptly ended a relationship. They simply can't get over the rejection, and they're nursing a continual grudge that they didn't get what they wanted and feel slighted and scorned.

I don't need grudges. Ill-will suits me nicely.

Thanks to Chuck and Ramana for the subject.

Forgive and forget

There's a lot of sancti-monious piffle about forgiving and forgetting, often by people who bear grudges by the lorry-load. But how many of us are able to be so charitable and so big-hearted?

It's hard to forgive someone why has deliberately insulted you or exploited you or cheated you out of something. It's not as if they made an innocent mistake and didn't really know what they were doing.

Likewise it's hard to forget something that had a big impact on your life, that ruined a relationship or lost you a job or wrecked your health. How can you forget something that had a lasting influence and can't be reversed?

I can't forgive my parents for keeping me at a school that was clearly unsuited to my personality and abilities, and where I was obviously unhappy. I can't forgive a particular boss for putting me through a nerve-wracking disciplinary process for what I thought was a quite trivial offence. I can't forgive politicians who have made life worse for so many people. I can't forgive the neighbours who kept us awake time after time with their all-night parties. Nor can I forget all these things, unless I suddenly develop total amnesia.

So no, I think forgiving and forgetting is a pretty tall order. Maybe the saintly gurus and holy men can manage it, but for most of us it's a non-starter. What is practical though is to say, I don't forgive and I don't forget but there's nothing to be gained in dwelling on these things and wishing they had never happened. And there's nothing to be gained by fuming with rage or seeking revenge. That won't remedy anything, it'll just turn me into a sour, bitter old sod.

Even that's too much for some. People nurse their private grudges for years, even when the person who prompted them is long dead and buried. They go on pushing for "justice" when anyone else can see they're asking for the moon.

Forgive and forget? You'll be lucky.

Forgiveness

I'm a forgiving person. I don't hold grudges. I don't look for revenge. I don't persecute people for their shortcomings. I don't think of people with bitterness and resentment.

But that doesn't mean that I overlook their faults, that I don't care if they've done something nasty or harmful. It doesn't mean I just turn the other cheek or pretend it never happened.

Of course I feel angry or disappointed or shocked or disillusioned. I might want them to make up for what they've done. I might want them to see the error of their ways. But I don't harbour any vicious or hateful feelings towards them. To my mind, that would damage me more than it damages them.

I certainly don't believe in an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. That doesn't solve anything, it usually only escalates the bad feeling as it turns into a tit-for-tat cycle of violence.

On the other hand, I don't much believe in the sentimental idea that forgiveness is only real forgiveness if you not only shun revenge but feel affection and compassion for the person who's wronged you. I think that's possible only if it's someone you love deeply in the first place, like a spouse or a child. With anyone else, it's asking an awful lot, especially if the person has done something quite brutally and coldly abusive.

Plenty of people have treated me badly, starting with my father, but if I'd nursed grudges against them, plotted revenge against them, I would have become a horribly sour and twisted individual. It would have driven all the happiness and buoyancy out of me and utterly contaminated my life. And why give such people the satisfaction of knowing I'm busy obsessing about them, fixating on them, when they're simply not worth thinking about?

But forgiveness seems to be a very under-rated practice right now, in the age of relentless smear campaigns and character assassination. It's about time it came back into favour.

Revenge is sweet?

I don't understand revenge. I've never sought revenge on anyone, however badly they've treated me. I've never felt that it would do me any good. If anything, it would just make me feel guilty and mean and belligerent.

But apparently a lot of people find revenge deeply satisfying. They find it cathartic, liberating, perversely enjoyable. They like to rub someone's face in their failings and make them feel as dreadful as possible.

It seems especially common among jilted or dissatisfied lovers. Women who slice up their partner's clothes or write insults on their cars or circulate embarrassing photos on the internet. Men who cut off their wives without a penny or make out they're promiscuous sluts.

Can it really be cathartic? Maybe if the person has treated you particularly shabbily. Maybe if you just want to get the frustration and anger out of your system. Maybe if you want to show them you're not simply a doormat they can wipe their feet on.

But I've never felt the urge. My father treated me badly. One or two employers have treated me badly. Some supposed friends have treated me badly. But mostly I just shrugged my shoulders, rescued my self-esteem and moved on. I never "had it in" for them. I never wanted to "give them a good kicking." That desire in itself would affect my self-esteem. It would feel undignified, cheap, vulgar, primitive. I prefer to hold my head up high and turn my back on them.

Revenge strikes me as a kind of "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" principle, which I've never agreed with. Two wrongs don't make a right, and to my mind revenge is precisely one wrong added to another. If you want catharsis, why not just look for a better lover, a better friend, a better employer? Surely that'll do more for you in the long run than cutting up someone's clothes?

But maybe I'm just lacking a normal, healthy, full-bloodied emotion that needs to be indulged from time to time. Maybe I'm simply too kind-hearted, too phlegmatic, too rational.

Eye for an eye

If someone had attacked you so violently you ended up paralysed, would it be a fitting punishment for the attacker to be paralysed in return? An eye for an eye, as it were?

A man who was left crippled after being hit with a meat cleaver asked a Saudi judge to sentence his assailant to surgical paralysis. The judge is now getting medical advice on whether this would be possible, before he decides what sentence to pass.

The paralysis could be induced by severing the man's spinal cord.

Apart from the question of whether any criminal, however serious the offence, should be subjected to such a gruesome and debilitating punishment, it is extraordinary that the victim should have a say in what punishment is meted out.

In most countries this would be a matter strictly for the judge, precisely because the victim might demand something utterly barbaric.

It is extraordinary too that the traditional "eye for an eye" attitude is still seen as a sensible legal principle. If the real cause of the attack is a fit of uncontrolled anger, how is physical paralysis the solution? Surely it can only breed bitterness and more anger?

I also wonder what surgeon with any conscience or humanity could possibly agree to deliberately paralyse a presumably fit and healthy man, simply because a judge decides it is an appropriate punishment. How could he live with himself afterwards?

Naked fury

How would you feel if your ex-lover had taken photos of you naked (or worse) and was holding onto the photos against your wishes? Or even circulating them to other people or putting them on the net?

This was the query on a newspaper problem page this week. An embarrassed woman wants her ex to return or delete the photos but he's refusing. Or rather, he's saying "Come and get them" and she's nervous about what will happen if she does.

It's not unusual these days for lovers to take intimate photos of each other - particularly when it's so easy with a digital camera. And such photos have often been sent into cyberspace, particularly if the ex feels bitter and wants some sort of malicious revenge.

Personally, I wouldn't be too bothered by my naked body gracing the net. As if anyone would want to see such an unpromising physique anyway. But I would be furious if it was accompanied by belittling and snide comments from someone out to stick the knife in.

Mind you, I wonder why people take nude pics of each other anyway. It's hardly necessary if you see your bedmate every day. What are you recording it all for?

You'r hardly going to stick them in the photo album to show your parents. "And this is Tracy in the buff. Look at those knockers, eh?" You're hardly going to line them up with the family snaps on your office desk. So what's the point? My mind wanders to frankly obscene and scurrilous motives....

And now I'm wondering what photos Jenny's been taking of me while I've been naked and fast asleep. I'd better take a closer look at that camera she's been so furtive about....