How long, is long enough?
Get your mind out of the gutter.
How long is long enough to hold a grudge for a perceived slight?
We have all been offended at some point in our life by someone we have then chosen to take a disliking to, but how long should we carry around the burden of dislike and how much effort should we put into getting a perceived revenge?
You have likely noticed that I have used the word "perceived" twice in terms of the slight and the revenge, because often, that is what both are, a self-originating belief that there was firstly a slight and secondly, future actions are some kind of revenge for the slight.
For instance, someone who feels like they have been offended or harmed in some way and builds that feeling of resentment, likely has the feeling that their dislike is in itself a type of revenge, where the "perpetrator" is missing out on the victim liking them, or some other interaction. For example, we se it on Hive when people get offended by someone on the platform, and they then threaten to quit, as if them quitting is going to bring the whole system down.
Then come the perceived revenge, where perhaps they do quit, thinking that "that'll show them" without considering the cost of their actions. Or, they go on some ranting campaign against the perpetrator of their perceived harm, as if it has the desired effect of revenge. What comes to mind for this case, is a couple weeks ago after I mentioned something in a comment, the person "quit" and called my a bagholder. In their mind, this might have been a huge insult, but being a HIVE "bagholder" is something I am quite satisfied with. I like holding HIVE, so where is the insult?
Yet, this is the problem with perception, because it doesn't actually need lend itself to reality. The two things can be completely misaligned. I often use a simple illustration for this where a wife asks her husband if she looks good in a dress and the husband responds, with the wife hearing "you look fat". Her immediate emotional reaction is likely to feel the pain of his insensitive comment and respond angrily. However, if the husband then corrects here and says, "I said fab, not fat" - she should recognize the gap between perception and reality and that her emotional outburst, was not warranted, it was not valid at all.
What if the husband doesn't correct her and just walks away?
So, now there is a perceived slight that was never based on reality that is hanging over the relationship. And likely, the wife is going to remember that moment and hold a grudge as if she was a victim of insensitivity. How long will she hold it for? Which takes me back to the original question,
How long, is long enough?
I think that this is an interesting thing to consider because most likely, we are all carrying around slights from the past that when they come to mind, pain us again. We haven't let them go. They are baggage, making us, you guessed it,
Bagholders.
But, unlike a bag of HIVE tokens, what is the value of us carrying around this past harm, perceived or real, constantly being hurt by it? Where is the value in giving people we might not like any thought at all? Rather than harming them, we are actually using our energy to harm ourselves, losing opportunity and space for better experience and empowering the object of our dislike - even if they do not know it at all.
Why do we put so much of our energy into things that don't give us some kind of return? Well, perhaps there is a return. Maybe it is the return of relevance, where a person feels that their perceived revenge, is an impact on the person they dislike. It might make them feel like they matter in that person's life, because that person matters in theirs.
Dislike is caring.
Caring about what the other person thinks, even if that other person has no idea of the existence of their obsessor. It is like a stalker who stalks a celebrity, but the celebrity doesn't have any idea they are being stalked, or who the stalker is at all. They are a "non-event" in their life, making no impact.
But of course, stalking is an extreme of this behavior, however holding a grudge is quite a common condition. So, I wonder how many people are actually able to let their grudges go, to forgive or at least forget about the past transgressions of others in their life and move on. They say the best revenge is to live one's best life, but if we are spending our energy on holding onto pain from the past, are we living our best life?
We all have baggage I guess, but it is worth running through our mental rooms and working out what we want to keep, and how much trash there is to throw away. I know that over the years, I have let a lot go, so rather than hold onto emotional bags, I can hold a lot of HIVE instead.
How long will I hold?
To the moon, and then onto the sun.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
