grateful for resentment

A FEW DAYS AGO a friend told me about the gratitude journal he'd started keeping. I told him he should start keeping a resentment journal as well. He thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.

     Gratitude journaling has always rubbed me the wrong way. Seems weird such a benign act would stick in my craw like that — it's a daily Thanksgiving for crying out loud! — but it did, and our conversation brought my subtle hatred for the practice to the surface.

     “If there's anything I've learned about cultivating peacefulness,” I said, “it's this: you can't run away from anything. You can't seek only pleasure and comfort and ignore the reality of pain and discomfort. In fact, this one-sided approach is exactly why we suffer in the first place. And until you've faced and embraced the spectrum of emotions you feel — good and bad, happy and sad, soothing and irritating — you're merely burying your head in the sand.”

     “But why would I want to dwell on those painful experiences,” he said.

     I said, “Don't dwell. Simply acknowledge the painful moment, extract whatever wisdom you can, then let it go. Often an irritating or hurtful encounter can serve as a source of great insight. It might hold a mirror up to you, showing you clearly the limits of your patience or compassion, for example. But don't dwell on it. Don't chew on it over and over, stewing in your resentment. Reflect on the experience then let it go.”

     I said, “And do the same with whatever you're feeling gratitude for. Don't dwell on every blessing, soaking in the sun of it. With this attitude, whatever life throws at you, you don't sweep it under the rug and you don't cling to it either. You touch it and let it go.”

     “Wow,” he said. “That's some serious Dr. Phil stuff right there.”          

     I resented the comparison.