Grudge

A reflection prompted by AKMA’s forgiveness blogthread…

My father’s greatest fault was that he held grudges. He held them so long and so deep that he drove wedges in my family. For example, a year after my mother’s sister died of breast cancer at 36, her husband failed to use my father’s legal services to close on a new house. My father never spoke to him again. He would not go to my uncle’s house so that I hardly ever saw my cousins with whom I had spent every summer until then. He would not invite my uncle to my sister’s wedding. My father insisted throughout the slow process of dying of cancer that my uncle not be allowed at his funeral. It’d be funny if it weren’t so destructive.

In my father’s case, this was part of his binary emotional nature. He either loved you or couldn’t talk about you without putting “goddamn” in front of your name. And the door between the two was one way: You could fall from favor but never regain it. As a result, his life had a pattern of always decreasing his circle of friends. It was just a matter of time.

Whatever the cause, if you want to see the social importance of forgiveness, just live with its opposite for a while. I was always on my father’s good side — which meant, by the way, that he forgave me an awful lot because I wasn’t very nice to him — but seeing the irrational bitterness of which he was capable made the love he offered seem just as little deserved and not a little dangerous.

Request for Book:

There’s no logical reason why holding grudges needs to go with this type of bifurcation, although the two are certainly complementary. But I just don’t know if there are grudge holders who are able to maintain a more shaded range of relationships. Also, a psychologist once told me that the trait sometimes skips generations. If someone can point me to an article or a book, I’d be interested. If there aren’t any, then please write one. Call it “Grudge: How the Inability to Forgive Makes You Miserable and Tears Apart the People Around You.” It’s a million dollar idea.

By the way, don’t miss the Head Lemur’s interview of AKMA.

Categories: Uncategorized dw