Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies”, said Nelson Mandela, one of my favourite quotes. Some of us, after having some unfortunate experience hold onto this feeling too much. Because we hurt, or we’re damaged and know it’s not fair so we can’t get over it. Or we simply don’t accept the idea of someone being so selfish, cruel, thoughtless or bad.
We are consciously and willingly nurture this kind of powerful feeling inside of us doing it. Each time something triggers the feeling we remember the related events and persons right away. But are we also aware of the side effects of this strong feeling?
Let’s put aside the related persons and events and just for a moment focus on the feeling. Let’s try to understand what is this feeling giving us or taking away from us. I am sure it won’t take too long to understand how this hatred or grudge is draining and damaging us. On the other hand, we have to question ourselves about this other hated person, does he/she know or care about our feelings or spend so many time by thinking of us? I don’t think so…
This is exactly how we keep poising our bodies and minds with hatred and grudge and by doing this we wait the hated one to acknowledge what he/she has done, or to feel guilty or regretful or to feel sorry and apologize or even to get hurt as we did. Well, it didn’t work till now and I assume it never will.
What I mean is not to forget what we went through, but instead;
- To accept the other people as they are,
- To learn from our experiences and take precautions instead of questioning why it’s happened to us,
- To review the persons and their places in our lives and decide to keep them in it or not instead of hating them. Don’t you think?
- It’s up to us to forgive or not. I just humbly suggest that it will be better for us to protect our bodies and minds from this kind of poisonous feelings. We don’t need to keep hating him or her who harmed us to the cost of harming ourselves continuously, do we? We must be loving ourselves much more than that.
