Emerging From Bitterness
Seth Godin recently wrote about how bitterness is consistent and impenetrable. If you let it, it can become “a wall you can lean against, whenever you choose”.
That resonated with me, as I’m sure it does with many of us. When we’ve been wronged (perceived or otherwise), it provides us with a point or direction towards which we can channel our emotions, most notably our anger.
It allows us to rest assured that we are not to blame and that we can/should place responsibility for what has transpired elsewhere - a person or an entity or an event.
It is, indeed, a familiar wall that we can return to time and again, offering us some sense of comfort.
But that’s about all it really offers.
So it got me thinking: How do we find our way out of it? What’s the process?
After all, letting go isn’t easy and forgiveness can be very, very hard. The concern is that doing so means we’re letting “them” get away with “it” (whoever “they” are whatever “it” is).
Surely, someone must be held accountable?
That’s absolutely right - someone must be held accountable. And I think that someone has to be us.
Now, that’s not to dismiss the wrongdoings of others, nor is it to suggest that we are to blame for everything that has happened in our lives.
Rather, it’s to suggest that the only things we can control are within ourselves: our outlook, our interpretations and our actions.
Persisting in our bitterness doesn’t move us forward. It slowly but surely ensures we retreat within ourselves, that we adopt defensive postures at the expense of progressive movement. It’s a path of stasis.
But letting it go - rather working towards letting it go - is a path for progress. And it’s one that requires conscious thought and concerted action.
It requires us to understand what’s happened and assess it critically. What was our share of this?
It requires us to understand and accept those things that we cannot change. Not be happy with it but to accept it as something we have no ability to shift.
It requires us to understand that those things we cannot change should not control how we feel about those things we can change. It shouldn’t take us out of the moment we are in and it shouldn’t constrain us from forward movement.
Of course, part of this might mean accepting that the path we originally intended to take may no longer be open to us. That it’s time to choose another path.
I appreciate this last bit is incredibly difficult. There’s a lot of self-questioning that will arise, some of it very much existential in its nature. But, it’s required work.
Yes, this in and of itself will yield an added measure of grieving, anger, futility and many other emotions. But it’s a necessary process.
And then, it’s about forward momentum, as we work to emerge from the intoxication that our bitterness has immersed us in.
And that means, thinking and planning for the future: what could be. How we move forward. Where we go. Who we go there with. And the mindset we plan to take with us.
After all that? We take action. We do the work. Not necessarily, it’s worth remembering, in one seamless forward motion, but often in fits and starts, in iterations, with a relapse here or there. But always focused around where we’re going, always resolving back towards our true North.
We do the work.
