“Resentment (anger) is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” ~ Saint Augustine
For awhile now, I have noticed more and more folks outwardly expressing anger and frustration towards one group or another, or one person or another. I am sure you have seen the same thing, you just have to turn on the news or read social media.
If you turn on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, you will be amazed by the amount of hatred being spewed back and forth but always away from the person reporting outwardly towards others. To be honest, it is pretty pathetic, but it seems to be indicative of a portion of our society.
The problem with all this outward expression of anger is threefold:
- It doesn’t achieve anything.
- It creates massive amounts of internal negativity, stress, and angst.
- The biggest problem is that It has a bigger negative impact on the person spewing it, than it does to the object of their focus (let me explain).
A False Sense of Pride
When I direct my anger or contempt towards someone, there is a temporary sense of pleasure or of feeling satisfied. It is the proverbial, “I certainly showed them, or ‘They certainly got a piece of my mind’ or ‘That’ll teach them, etc.'”
And while it may make you feel good temporarily, the long-term hidden truth is that it actually does more damage to you based on a Universal Law that has been around for thousands of years. It is called The Universal Law of Compensation, better known to some as the law of you “reap what you sow!”
You see, if you sow the seeds of anger and hatred, that is exactly what will come back to you, sometimes two-fold, sometimes ten-fold. If you wish misery or suffering onto others, what you will get back in return is exactly what you wished for others. It may not happen immediately, but it will always, always, always, happen eventually!
By-the-way, I am not even mentioning the cumulative, negative impact that stress and anger plays in the role of your health. It has been clinically proven that anger, stress, and resentment kills. That is not some made up statistic, it is science and it is real.
Stop in the Name of Self-Love
If I told you that a specific action you took regularly was causing you serious mental, emotional, and physical harm, would you keep doing it? If you knew what you were doing would eventually cause your self-destruction, would you continue doing it? Of course not, although we all know a few folks who might continue down the self-destructive path.
So why would we continue venting our anger outward towards others, especially if we know that it will eventually come back and bite us in the ass?
Maybe the million-dollar question isn’t how much do you don’t like, despise, or hate others. Maybe the right question is: How much you love yourself?
Nobody deserves to be unhappy or miserable. Wishing that on someone or something else just so you can temporarily feel good about yourself is one of the most inhumane things you can do to others, and even more importantly, to yourself!
What if?
What if just for today, we all gave each other the benefit of the doubt that the other person is doing the best they can with where they are in this exact moment in time? What if we stopped listening to all the negativity and noise in the media and on social media for just one day?
And what if we decided to love ourselves and each other more than we dislike, don’t like, or despise them and ourselves just for one day?
Imagine what a better place this would be…
Till next time!
