Let the Grudge go

Any advice of a moral nature should be internalised by the adviser first, else it may become hypocrisy. With that proviso, and the intention that I seek to remind myself first before the one ahead of me, I give the following few points.

Quite a few of you may already be familiar with this well-known hadith regarding the merit of daily forgiveness. It bears repetition:

The Messenger of Allah (SAW) was sitting with a group of the Sahabah (ra) in the mosque and he said “A man will now enter [who is] from the people of Paradise.” and a sahabi (companion) walked in. Later it happened again, and then a third time. ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr ibn al-‘aas (ra) wanted to find out what was so special about this man, so he asked the man if he could stay over his house for 3 days. The man allowed him to stay. 

Abdullah noticed that the man didn’t do anything out of the ordinary: He didn’t fast all the time, he slept some of the night and prayed some of the night, and so on. So after the 3 days, ‘Abdullah told him the real reason why he requested to stay with him, and he asked him what it was that could be the reason why he was from the people of Jannah. 

The man (ra) couldn’t think of anything, but after a bit he said “Every night, before I go to sleep, I forgive whoever has wronged me. I remove any bad feelings towards anyone from my heart.” (Kitab al-Zuhd by Ibn al-Mubarak – Number 694) 

Let the last line sink in for a minute. Beyond even forgiveness, what can set an otherwise unremarkable individual on the path to Paradise is the simple recognition that the heart must be clear of any ill will towards others. On paper, this sounds rather simple, Who would seek to intentionally cultivate feelings of negativity towards another soul? Yet this ideal is rarer than gold.

A common affliction of today has become the grudge. A grudge is a nurtured feeling of resentment or hostility towards another, more of a longstanding emotion rather than a momentary spike. The reasons for the emotion can be varied depending on the circumstances of our lives, and the feeling of negativity can be justifiable or irrational.

Human beings nowadays are especially prickly by nature. With our enlarged egos and bloated sense of self-importance, it doesn't take more than a minor transgression to offend us personally. Many times we let the ashes of these emotions reside inside us, and often derive a bit of comfort from the warmth of our smoldering anger. This shouldn't be confused with righteous indignation, which isn't personal and can be justified on occasion based on moral principle.

Grudges respond to our more baser instincts. We can feel vindicated by feeling either the poor victim or the moral superior. But in the end, grudges gnaw at our beings, eat us slowly inside, and compromise our ability to be truly compassionate to others. No matter how far developed we think our spiritual status may be, or how clean we think our hearts are, grudges will hold us back. More intense grudges that last years can even be a cause of physical and psychological trauma. And of course, grudges can weaken or end relationships with those whom we should be closer to.

With this in mind, I am just proposing the following tidbits of advice on how to deal with grudges, with the ultimate objective of letting the grudges weaken, wither and disappear, so we can breathe a much lighter breath.

Don't let a grievance become a grudge. Many times, grudges begin from some perceived grievance, which may well be legitimate. As the aggrieved party, the onus is on us on how to respond to avoid a problem becoming a bigger one. If we take a passive-aggressive route, we can sidestep the real issue and allow the feelings to fester inside of us, gradually becoming a grudge which is hard to remove. We can either directly voice our grievance in the hope of resolving the problem, preferably sooner rather than later. Or, if that would be ineffective, and there may be nothing we can do at this point to resolve the matter, better to internally forgive and more on with life.

Identify if you have a grudge. Oftentimes, we may not be fully aware that we possess a grudge. It may be buried under a host of other emotional issues, and neatly hidden behind polite discourse and social protocol. A good way to identify a grudge is to check if the visage of the grudgee elicits some sort of visceral response.  My friend Hakim Archuletta pointed out that emotions are not just mental abstracts but things we experience as somatic (bodily) sensations. So does the mere thought of the person trigger some bothersome feeling in our chest, or stomach, or elsewhere? That may be a clue that we are burying something deep.

Disassociate the person from the action.  This may not be easy, but it may be necessary. Humans are error-prone and often we set unrealistic expectations for others. But even if an otherwise good persons does actions which fall far from the mark, we should be able to isolate our distaste for the action and not define the person solely based on that. Rather than sitting in high judgement of the whole individual, perhaps it may be worthwhile to condemn the action while counterbalancing our assessment with some of the person's more positive traits.

Look Inward. We can take a leaf from the moral wisdom of 'He that is without sin among you, cast the first stone'. Haven't there been times when we bungled a situation, and wished that others would cut us some slack? And is our grudge truly for the reason we claim it is, or are there other underlying emotions of envy and pride that have crept in? We should never underestimate our power at self-deception.

Is it worth it? What price do we pay by allowing the grudge to metastasize inside of us? Do we end up pouring a lot of emotional energy into an issue of little significance? Do we end up granting a sort of victory to someone that annoys us, by being so utterly consumed in thought over him or her? Can the grudge effectively destroy a relationship that is supposed to be sacred? Is all this worth the psychological satisfaction of maintaining the grudge? We need to see the forest for the trees.

Have a Big Heart. Don't be pretty, be magnanimous. Cast aside the little issues, and open a space in your heart for others. Life is short enough as it is to be dedicated to personality clashes and squabbles. Work on exercising your muscles of mercy every now and then to ensure you can focus on more important matters.

The Jews, post-Holocaust, had a collective mantra of 'Never to Forgive, Never to Forget'. The idea is that some crimes are unforgivable, which may well be the case. But it made little sense for their next generations to imbibe such a mantra and the coldness behind it. Ultimately, our ability to transcend our grudges depends on our level of forgiveness. We have to recognize that this modern world has the extraordinary ability to inspire dislike in others at the drop of a hat. Moral equivalents of speeding tickets suddenly become unpardonable offenses. We can't take our relationships for granted like that.

To be the better person, we have to let the grudge go.