I once heard resentment described as “setting yourself on fire, hoping the smoke bothers the other person”. This metaphor has since helped me put resentments in perspective. It’s bad enough that someone may have committed an injustice against us, now we’re going to let them continue to harm us by allowing our resentment against them to fester within ourselves?

What exactly is resentment? Resentment is defined as setting yourself on … just kidding. Merriam-Webster’s definition is as follows: a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury. Did someone or some situation ever make you angry and you continuously relive or revisit that anger or situation in your mind? But maybe this time, in your mind, you really tell that person you resent what you think. If you only could have another chance at the same situation, you would… %?!&#$%! Has this ever happened to you?

The metaphor in the opening sentence, reminds us that resentments hurt us more than they do the other person, situation or institution. Even if we were truly wronged and have a valid reason to be angry, resentments only eat away at our spiritual, mental and emotional states. It’s difficult to be happy and resentful at the same time. Go ahead, try it. Get yourself all worked up over a past injustice or perceived injustice and see if you feel happy.

Now that we’ve determined that resentments are not beneficial to us, what are we to do with them? The simple answer is to let go of them. But how do we do that? First we need to assess the situation that made us angry. Check our part in the situation and if we were at all wrong, apologize and make amends. Maybe we did nothing wrong and were entirely the victim of an injustice or maybe someone just touched on a sensitive subject. Either way, we can assess the situation, recognize it for what it was, to the best of our ability, realizing that we will never know why someone else does what they do. Determine why it is that we were angry so that we can learn about ourselves and our reactions. Now that we have some additional awareness of ourselves, we should be better prepared to handle a similar situation in the future. We want to always improve ourselves if possible. We now try to get an understanding of the other person or institution that we resent. Try to look at the situation from the other side. Sometimes we hurt people and they resent us and maybe in our minds, we did nothing wrong. Perhaps that other person or institution had a good reason to do whatever it is that has caused us to resent. Try to gain an understanding of what that could be because with understanding comes compassion and forgiveness. This should help to alleviate our resentment.

Let’s say we can find no such understanding, what do we do then? It’s back to the opening metaphor. We now realize that resentments justified or not, have no place in our lives, our minds and our hearts. They can only bring suffering. There is no good to come from resentments. Faced with this knowledge, what choice do we have other than to let go of the resentment. If we find ourselves experiencing resentment, reliving a past moment while feeling ill will towards another person or institution, we can stop those thoughts and tell ourselves that this anger we are feeling and these negative thoughts that we are having, are not beneficial to us or those around us. We can keep performing this task every time we feel resentment coming, remembering that we our hurting ourselves, not those we resent and we are giving others power over our happiness.

May you be happy and at peace.

Tags: Anger, Resentment