One handy way to take my spiritual/emotional temperature is to ask: Who do I resent? Whether it’s people, places, or institutions–who or what do I resent?
I’ve been mulling this over a lot recently because, three years into this “new” leg of the journey in Tucson, I find that certain people still rise up in my consciousness, often many years after the fact, who I feel did me wrong over the 30 years I lived in LA.
I’ve been taking these people one by one, dedicating to each my prayers, works, joys and sufferings for a day. Really sitting with the person for a bit. Trying to “feel” him or her in a sense instead of myself.
And what’s been fantastic is that I see more and more clearly how very often I had placed myself in a position to be hurt. I was renting a place because it was cheap and I was afraid to pay more and inevitably there were landlord and/or neighbor problems. I was desperate for connection and love and I tried to insinutate myself into the lives of people who were clearly incapable of valuing me, just as I wasn’t truly valuing them. I showed up at places and to people from whom I could get a little bit of a free ride (totally of course hiding this from myself).
In fact, a lot of my stuff, historically, has to do with money fears–understandable, perhaps, as a single woman trying to make my way as a creative writer. But to understand isn’t to overlook or to refuse to see.
I took things personally. I had expectations. I was often blind to the fact that even when my motives are good, I often try to run the show.
I keep thinking of my late friend Dennis. Dennis had been shot in a convenience store holdup when he was 18 and lived in a wheelchair, a paraplegic in chronic pain, till he died at 64 or so. They never caught the guy who shot him.
I once asked him how he dealt with the resentment. He replied, “My body’s shit; I can’t afford to let that happen to my spirit. That guy was doing what he was supposed to be doing that day, and I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.”
And really, isn’t that just about always the case? People are just going about their business, doing the best they know how (just as I am), and it’s in the nature of the human condition that we step on each other’s toes now and then. Especially if you happen to have put yourself where you don’t belong.
Also I read an essay called “We Do Not Come in Peace” the other day by Cynthia L. Haven, who was a friend and is a scholar of René Girard, the late mimetic desire/scapegoat theory philosopher.
An excerpt:
“After [a talk Girard gave many years ago at Stanford], one man asked a provocative question: “Given that we can’t entirely trust the veracity of ancient writings, how would you measure the success of your theory?”
Girard’s answer was a thunderbolt in its directness and simplicity: ‘You will see the success of my theories when you recognize yourself as a persecutor.’
That is not where most people begin. Yet there is nowhere else to begin.”
You will see the success of my theories when you recognize yourself as a persecutor.
That is always where and when the welcome truth dawns. If I’m really honest: Who was the persecutor, and who was the victim? As I go about my day, in my thoughts, words, and actions–who is the persecutor and who is the victim?
Let’s just say it’s no accident we begin the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with the Penitential Rite.
In fact, my worst resentments aren’t necessarily against those who did me the most harm (insofar as these things can be measured): they’re against people around whom I acted badly in response to the perceived harm. Any time (admittedly seldom) when I was able to turn the other cheek, or exercise restraint of tongue and pen, or just keep walking with a more or less unclouded heart–those resentments in my experience tend to dissolve over time fairly quickly.
The times I made myself look bad, or exposed my vulnerability, in other words, are what really rankle.
Anyway, food for thought. As G.K. Chesterton responded when asked, “What’s wrong with the world?”: I am.
So let’s let everyone off the hook, for a day at least.
Meanwhile, this week’s entry in my Personal Communion of Artist Saints: Donald Evans, the King of Postage Stamps.
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