It’s hard to come out of a place of resentment, and it takes practice (just like everything). Practice forgiving about small, everyday things. You can always non-forgive later. Who and what are you ready to let go of resentment toward?
I am not one to harbor resentment toward a particular person. My mother taught me that behind every action done to you is a person with a pain and anxiety and a whole history of actions that have been done to them. When people hurt you, it’s not usually about you. My father taught me that having patience and keeping cool was a better method of building and maintaining relationships than letting your emotions get the better of you. Your anger won’t fix the situation.
I try to understand why people choose to act in hurtful ways and this understanding helps me to deal with these people in a positive way.
However, I do, sometimes harbor resentment towards institutions. I am able disconnect the individuals from the institutions they belong to, loving them, but hating their place of work, school, government, etc and how it compels them to act.
I harbor this type of resentment toward my Alma Matter, James Madison College at Michigan State University. Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy was fascinating to me, but I didn’t see the end in it. The material, I knew, would be ultimately useless to me. Social Relations and Policy was equally interesting and much more pertinent to life, but I felt out of place. The people in this major each had a cause, a passion. Education Policy, Immigration Policy, Sexual Policy, Poverty Policy, Racial Policy. I was interested at how religion lay at the crossroads of all of these issues, but not necessarily in how to draft policy around any particular one.
Most of all, I hated the competitive nature of the students. I hated the vying for the professor’s approval. I hated the one-upmanship during discussion. I hated the manipulative forms of cheating students used to get good grades. I hated the flaunting of extra work. I hated the slickness of some students and the awkward self-righteousnesss of others.
Even on group projects collaboration was a usually joke. Each student wanted to look better than all the others. Some slaved over the work, acting (for the professor’s sake) the martyr. Others lead, delegating and relating to the professor, acting as though they were above the rest of us, our supervisor. Others did little work, but when the presentation came around, they did most of the talking. (And then were a few, like me, who tried to tread carefully, only wishing to stand in no one else’s way. This was very exhausting.)
I did not hate any student in particular. In class, many of my closest friends, I knew, perpetrated these hated behaviors. But I knew they felt they had to, to be successful.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I sat down with my advisor, the one and only time I did so. I told him that I felt a call to ministry, that I wanted to attend seminary after undergrad, that I wasn’t sure that James Madison was the right place for me anymore. A James Madison alum, he assured me that the education I was getting was exemplary and I would be able to go anywhere and do anything once I was finished. He himself had even, briefly, considered seminary.
I completed my degree, miserably. My GPA didn’t suffer much, but I felt, the entire time I was there, like I could have done better, had I cared about what I was learning.
Now that I am where I belong and I am happy, I think it’s time to recognize how that experience helped me become who I am.
I absorbed the intellectual complexities of many social justice issues. I accepted the innate selfishness that motivates politicians and citizens. I built a network of connections with potentially powerful people. I communicated, in writing and speech, in the same language as the country’s decision makers.
Without this experience I would not be as effective an advocate for the city and the people I now love.
James Madison College, I forgive you for the misery I endured within your walls and I thank you for the things I learned to do and not to do from professor and student alike.
alex discerns a way 