These Difficult Times

What does it take to successfully hold a grudge for long periods of time?

I have held a few long-term grudges before, and this question interested me, so I decided to give it some thought. What I came up with is an easy system for framing these quirky fixations that afflict us, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot. I begin with a rundown of the cast of characters in a grudge situation; then I flesh out the general, all-purpose components of generic grudges; and finally I wind down with some ways you can put your old grudges to bed and, better yet, to good use.

The Cast Members

• The PERPETRATOR. He who causes the grudge.
• The CRIME. The act by the Perpetrator who induces the grudge. The crime may range in severity from petty crime (slights, insults, and misdemeanors) all the way up to larger crime (felonies and man-slaughter). This crime must remain be unpunished for any grudge to form, and it must cause a sense of injustice in the Victim.
• The VICTIM. He who carries the grudge.
• The GRUDGE. The Victim’s reaction to the crime. The grudge appears metaphorically similar to “emotional baggage.” These emotional bags may appear to other people as “personal issues.”

What Ingredients Are Required, Within Victims, for a Grudge to Occur?

In grudge situations, all Victims share the same general ingredients, or characteristics. A Victim must have several key attributes for a grudge to form and be retained over time. The Victim must:

• Have a very good memory of the crime.
• Have a heightened sense of indignation.
• Be energetic.
• Accommodate his grudge within his identity and actively defend it from forces of grudge-erosion.

1. The Victim must have a very good memory of the crime.
Having a good memory of the crime is, bar none, the most important attribute. People lucky enough to possess good memories are ironically the most predisposed to forming grudges.

Along with possessing a good memory of the crime, the Victim must also regularly recall it and its Perpetrator. He must recall them by three methods: by intentionally reminding himself of the crime; by placing triggers that regularly remind him of the crime; or by being around objects or events that trigger memory of the crime.

If a person is forgetful, he is not likely become a Victim. Grudges simply don’t function without the Victim vividly recalling the crime. If the Victim’s recall of the crime becomes infrequent or vague, his grasp upon the grudge weakens, and the grudge withers away. Without visualizing the crime, the Victim forgets why he carried it in the first place. He loosens his grip upon the grudge; he forgets the crime, forgives the Perpetrator, and the grudge drops away. However, possessing a good memory of the crime and recalling frequently isn’t enough…

2. The Victim must have a heightened sense of indignation.
He must be enraged by injustice. This predisposes the Victim to hold grudges. Indignation is critical to the phenomena of grudges: the stronger the indignation, the longer the grudge lasts.

A dynamic exists between a Victim’s indignation and his identity. They are umbilically joined together. So if a crime affects a potential Victim’s identity, a grudge forms and he officially becomes a Victim. The grudge feasts upon the connection between identity and indignation, and it garners lasting strength against indignation by perpetually threatening the Victim’s identity. Whenever this connection is present, it makes it unlikely the indignant person will ever be grudge-free.

Easy-going or passive people never carry grudge or turn into Victims. People with no indignation don’t respond to the Perpetrator’s crime. A grudge is unlikely to form when a crime fails to threaten the Victim’s identity.

A Perpetrator who is well-acquainted with his Victim’s personality may be able to capitalize on this identity-indignation connection and leverage it into a long-lasting grudge. A sophisticated trouble-maker knows what crime will successfully assault his Victim’s identity, and he executes this crime upon his Victim and exacts heavy damage by creating a custom-tailored grudge with a harmful, lasting effect.

In other words, if the Perpetrator knows his Victim has a heightened sense of indignation, he may be able to “really stick it” to this Victim and create a memorable crime of long-term residual power and fuel what may potentially become in the Victim an ancient grudge.

3. The Victim must be energetic.
The sheer mental exertion needed to maintain a grudge requires sustained endurance. The bigger the crime committed by the Perpetrator, the more energy required from the Victim to carry the grudge. The Victim must be energetic enough to “carry” the emotional burden of his grudge. Some people simply don’t have the mental energy to carry grudges long distances through time. Without this energy, the Victim must “let go” of the grudge, which means he loses grip upon his grudge.

A strange dynamic occurs between the severity of the crime and the energy a Victim exerts in maintaining the grudge. Logically, you might think a little grudge would be easy to carry for long periods of time and a big grudges would be harder and more prone to be dropped early on. But this is not the case. The opposite occurs. A Victim easily drops a little grudge, but he fights tooth-and-nail to maintain a serious one. The greater the crime committed, the more the Victim spends energy in defending the grudge and in feeding it.

4. The Victim must accommodate his grudge within his identity and actively defend it from forces of grudge-erosion.
This requires all three core components: a vivid memory, a heightened sense of indignation, and a storehouse of energy. When any of these factors are absent, no lasting grudge forms because the Victim automatically disallows the grudge from entering into his identity.

Our Metaphors For Grudges

We perceive grudges as burdens. This is indicated by our terms “to carry” and “to hold” a grudge, implying this type of emotional material has mass or weight. This is also indicated by our term “to let go” of grudges. The meaning behind the “weight” of grudges is, the heavier it feels, the harder it is to hold onto.

The act of holding a grudge has a distinct quality of burdening, so that carrying a grudge, maintaining it over long periods does not occur automatically. Victims must intentionally maintained their grudges by refueling their fully-functioning and optimized identity-indignation connection. Otherwise, the grudge loses its strength and the grudge-carrier must “let go” of the grudge, which amounts essentially to giving to the Perpetrator full forgiveness for his crime and “letting him get away with it.” At this point, the Victim “gets over it,” meaning the crime and its ensuing grudge transform into an obstacle he has surmounted and he drops the emotional baggage.

Dropping A Grudge

Why Drop A Grudge?

The main reason to drop a grudge is simply to unburden oneself. Grudges can be feel emotionally very dense, and relieving oneself of a grudge can be a cathartic and spiritually uplifting act. We have many words to describe this state of relief, such as buoyant, upbeat, uplifted, better, lightened.

How To Drop A Grudge

In order to successfully drop the grudge, the Victim must…

• Develop the ability to detach from his vivid memories and stop fixating on the crime
• Decouple his sense of indignation from his identity
• Starve the grudge by limiting the energy he expends on it
• Expel the grudge from his identity and allow it to wither away

These steps force the Victim to re-define himself so the grudge is not built-into his identity; this kills the grudge and unburdens the Victim.

The Use Of A Grudge, The Use Of A Pearl

A grudge is often a burden from which we should relieve ourselves, and unburdening yourself of all your grudges is a very good habit. But before you unburden yourself, understand that a grudge can be very useful. It can provide a powerful incentive to work and accomplish goals. Sometimes the process of coping gracefully with a grudge bears incredible fruit.

How Oysters Transform Their Irritants Into Pearls

When talking about profiting from a grudge, we must discuss the oyster for a moment. Oysters evolved an ability to transform their irritants into pearls, known as pearlization. An oyster reacts to an irritant, generally a parasite it cannot purge, by encasing the intruder in a protective material called mother-of-pearl, which incarcerates the parasite and renders it inert, and thereby forms a pearl. A pearl is an imprisoned parasite, and the process of pearlization is the oyster’s coping tool. This is how the oyster copes with irritants. An oyster cannot produce a pearl unless it suffers an irritant, an affliction.

What the irritant is to the oyster, grudges are to human beings. Grudges can initiate the beginning of something beautiful. I mentioned above how to expel a grudge, but the question is: How does a human being pearlize a grudge?

How to Pearlize a Grudge

Grudges are powerful instructors. They are opportunities for a Victim to learn about himself, and it’s important a Victim extracts the lesson contained in a grudge before he purges it from his identity and gets over it. A Victim ought not to waste a painfully juicy grudge by ignoring it, suppressing it, or purging it too early. He needs to relish the grudge for a while, in order to pearlize it. Through this process, a grudge can transform into a difficulty not to be denigrated but celebrated.

So how does a Victim alter his reaction toward his grudge in a healthy direction so that he, like the Oyster, imprisons his irritant and transforms it into a pearl? In order to successfully pearlize a grudge, the Victim must match the oyster. He must…

• Imprison the memory of the crime by emotionally detaching from it, retaining it, and not fixating on it.
• Reverse his sense of indignation by becoming grateful to the Perpetrator for providing the crime and by learning the lesson it brings. This is extremely hard to do because this so deeply threatens the Victim’s identity.
• Reflect on the grudge and be vigilant about applying the lessons it carries. The quicker he applies these lessons, the quicker he pearlizes his grudge into a pearl.
• Wear his pearl proudly as a badge of strength and grace.

IN CONCLUSION, think of difficulties in life as opportunities for meaning and growth. I hope this system gives you a useful set of tools to examine your grudges, enables you to think in a versatile way about the many difficulties that afflict you, and helps you in how you deal with troublesome people.