Resentment

Let’s say somebody pisses you off. Let’s say somebody backstabs you at work. What are you going to do about it?

You go home, you lay in bed at night, and you engage in all these revenge fantasies. I’m gonna fuck that guy, you think. You are caught in a maze of resentment, thinking of all the ways you’re going to get even. Consequently, you can’t sleep. You toss and turn until two in the morning, trying to send hate through the universe tubes, and you finally drift off to sleep, and then your alarm goes off at five-thirty, and you’re still thinking about this guy. You’re thinking about him as you take a shower. You’re thinking about him as you get dressed. You’re thinking about him in the car on the way to work.

Guess what? He isn’t thinking about you!

You are spending all this mental energy thinking about Mr. Public Enemy #1, and he isn’t thinking about you. He’s spending his time thinking about more productive things, like his family, or his pets, or how to make more money.

That’s the way resentment goes—it’s usually one-way.

But resentment is no joke. There are basically only two types of spiritual disturbances—fear and resentment. I addressed fear earlier. In many ways, resentment is worse. Resentment will consume your soul and make you do things you’d never imagine you’d do, and I’m not just talking about getting revenge. I’m talking about hurting yourself. You’ll engage in self-destructive behavior, like excessive drinking, overeating, acting out sexually, or anything else. You’ll torpedo your own career. You’ll torpedo your marriage. No exaggeration—resentment can ruin your life.

Now, sometimes we have what is known as justified anger at another person. Anytime you have a conflict with another person, you always have to ask yourself what your part in it was. And if you are really introspective about it, you might come to the conclusion that you had no part in it at all. You just got steamrolled by some random jerk, which happens sometimes. So if you are totally blameless, how can you not be angry at the other person? My friends, not even I am qualified to handle justified anger. As I have written before, I try not to ever get angry, because getting angry disturbs my peace and serenity. You might read from some other self-help dickhead that anger is a good thing and can actually be used to your advantage. I basically spent all of my twenties in a state of anger more or less all the time. It was exhausting. It would be really dumb to acquire wisdom from Star Wars, but don’t give in to the dark side, Luke. Hate has never, ever accomplished anything. Sometimes people don’t follow the script that I have written for them. They will, or they won’t. And this gets to the core of why resentment is the worst of all spiritual disturbances—you can’t control other people—and if you try, you will drive yourself nuts. Let them be dickheads. They’re on their path, and you’re on your path.

I want to take a brief detour here and talk about how unproductive it is to try to control the entire universe with our minds. We worry about bad things happening, thinking that if we worry hard enough, that if we pray for a bad outcome, then it won’t happen. We resent other people, thinking that if we resent them hard enough, they’ll change and we will get what we want. Virtually all forms of non-heritable mental illness come from a desire to control other people and our surroundings. Virtually all forms of non-heritable mental illness come from an inability to accept other people and the world as they are. You can’t control your kid dropping out of college. You can’t control your husband letting out a loud fart when he gets out of bed in the morning. You can’t control the county when they hand you a property tax increase. You can’t control the airport that just rerouted flight patterns over your house. You can’t control who becomes president. The number of things you actually can control is shockingly small. You take the action, and you leave the results up to somebody else. That’s how this game works. Read this paragraph a few times. If you understand it and internalize it, you will never need a therapist again.

So back to resentment. You can’t control other people with your minds. It probably seems silly to read that—you’re probably thinking, I never do that. Well, yes, you do. If someone’s behavior disturbs you, you basically have two options. Option one is you talk to them about it, honestly and respectfully, and tell them how their behavior makes you feel bad. Option two is to decide it’s not that important, and forget about it. There are no other options. But most people go to option three—they don’t talk about it, they don’t forget about it, and instead, engage in trench warfare in their minds—which does nothing! Except—it makes you feel bad. You have probably heard the quote that resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. People die because of resentment. People end up sitting in jail because of resentment. Again: you have option one or option two. There is no third option. One caveat here--if you try option two, and it doesn’t work, and you can’t forget about it, then go back to option one.

Or! There is another solution. This is not easy. So let’s say that Mr. Dickhead has pissed you off, and you’re hating his guts, and it’s consuming all your thoughts, and you can’t get any peace. Here is what you do:

You pray for them to have all the things in life you would want for yourself.

If you want more money, you pray for them to have more money. If you want more fame, pray for them to have more fame. If you want better health, you pray for them to have better health. If you want a bigger house, you pray for them to live in a fucking mansion.

You send love to them. Find a quiet spot in your house, your bedroom, your library, a special place, and send love to them. Do this once a day for two weeks, and let me know how it turns out.

I can tell you how it will turn out—your resentment will be gone.

But I’m right! you say. Who gives a fuck if you are right? Do you want to be right, or do you want to feel better? Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? We have a need to be right all the time so that we can protect our egos. Financial Twitter is full of people who want to be right so they can protect their egos—and people see right through it. Acceptance is the answer. I mean, look. None of this means that you have to have a relationship with the person who wronged you. You could be past the point of no return with this person. You don’t need to have a relationship with them—but you do need to be free of the resentment. You need to be free of the resentment so you can thrive. I don’t think there’s a therapist alive who will tell you that you need to go back into a toxic relationship. You don’t to be friends with them—but if they’re taking up space rent-free in your head, then you need to do something about it.

When you free yourself of fear, when you free yourself of resentment, you have so much space in your heart to be of service to other people. When you are consumed by fear or resentment, you don’t have room for things like empathy and generosity. You are too wound up in your own bullshit. Let’s say you get divorced. Are you going to spend the next 20 years hating your ex-wife? That sounds like a good plan. Keep it up. You will be the guy in the office who has no friends.

Some people (like myself) had difficult childhoods. Are you going to be 40, resenting your parents, and the things they did to you? This is what therapists mean when they talk about moving on. They talk about the power of forgiveness, which, by the way, is a central tenet of Christianity. You don’t forgive other people for them, you forgive them for you. A lot of people look at forgiveness as a sign of weakness, that it’s win/lose, and you’re losing. Again, how insane does it sound to wish for good things to happen to the person that you hate? I don’t wish for bad things to happen to anyone—even the people who I dislike, even the people who have wronged me. I truly hope they go on to live happy, productive lives filled with joy. It’s not a matter of whether they deserve it or not. Somewhere, out there, someone has a resentment against me, and is wishing for shit to rain down on me, and it’s not working.

Why should you listen to me? I don’t have a PhD in psychology. I’m not an LCSW. I’m not a therapist. Let’s just say that 20 years ago, I was the most psychologically unhealthy person in the world, and I’ve spent every day of the last 20 years thinking about how to get better. I’m a pretty happy guy, and I wish the same for you.