Give up your grudge already

From the time I was in fifth grade up until my senior year of high school, there was a boy… From the time I was in fifth grade up until my senior year of high school, there was a boy in my grade who I didn’t care for. One day on the bus to school I was sitting with my friend and he said, “Why are you sitting with her? When the white men came to America they weren’t friends with the Indians.”

Compounding the obvious poor quality of this insult was its inaccuracy — being that I’m half Indian as in the India in Asia, not Native American. Either way, his comment made me the most irate I’d ever been in my eleven years of life to that point.

I held a grudge against him for years until high school, when our similar social circles and close locker proximity caused us to coexist quite frequently.

After getting to know him, I quickly learned that he wasn’t a mean person, let alone a racist. Years ago, he was just a clueless fifth grader trying to impress his bus buddies.

So I let go of the grudge, and boy did it feel good. If not for my ability to finally let go of that grudge, I would have missed out on knowing a nice kid.

Too often we hold grudges and refuse to let them go, which can be very unhealthy, not to mention time and energy consuming.

It appears that holding grudges does nothing more than fuel anger and create additional stress, allowing for bitterness and resentment to thrive, which detracts from happiness. If we have a problem with someone, we should confront it head on. From that point, we should either forgive him and move on, or forget about him and move on. Either way, we must move on.

Studies have also reported benefits of forgiving. ABC reported that releasing resentment can reduce the severity of heart disease and allow for the possibility of prolonging the life of cancer patients. A study from the University of Montgomery concluded that forgiveness education could be critical in crime prevention.

However, forgiving and/or forgetting can be very hard and is usually easier said than done. When we are wronged, we naturally get angry. We feel betrayed and hope that by writing off the person who wronged us, we are protecting ourselves from further wrongs that person could inflict upon us.

But such a strategy can only last for so long until we run out of people in our lives to write off. It’s likely that everyone we’re close with either has wronged us, or will wrong us in some way or another at some point, even if it’s only minor.

There are, of course, some serious situations for which the typical “forgive or forget” theme isn’t applicable. For example, if someone murdered one of my friends or family members, I don’t think I could ever forgive or forget, even though there have been several people who have done so.

But when it comes to the situations most of us face, rather than refusing to let go, we should try to refuse to let our resentment get the best of us.

When I think about grudges, I’m reminded of my old dog, Golda, who loved car rides and was allowed to come along more often than not. But during long trips or hot days, we had to leave her at home. All it would take was a simple, “Golda, you can’t come,” for her head to slump, her tail to go between her legs and for her to retreat to her spot in the corner behind the recliner.

But each and every time we returned, without fail, she’d be there waiting for us — waiting to greet us, tail wagging and all. She forgot that just a few hours before, we crushed her dreams of coming in the car and left her home alone. She never held a grudge and she was always happy to see us.

Holding a grudge will probably get you nowhere in most situations. Dr. Fred Luskin, author of “Forgive for Good,” says that although holding a grudge is a strategy for coping with hurt, it is an ineffective one and that those holding grudges must ask themselves what good it’s doing them.

He urges people to ask themselves, “How much of your limited time, energy, space, do you want to spend on something that’s gone? When you put it that way, most people don’t want to spend as much as they do.”

Last year, a man named Thomas Doswell was released from prison after serving 19 years for a rape that he didn’t commit. Instead of being consumed with anger and vengeance, he said, “I couldn’t walk around for 20 years with anger bottled up in me. It would have killed me. It would have done more damage to me than good.”

Although I could never imagine being as calm in a similar situation, I have nothing but admiration for his ability to forgive and I’m sure he’s living a happier life now than he would if he were living with stored resentment.

We should strive to forgive and forget because life’s too short to be walking around bitter and angry. And if nothing else, save your energy — the person you’re holding a grudge against probably isn’t crying himself to sleep every night because of it.

Don’t be that way. E-mail Anjali at amn17@pitt.edu.