Anger management...

Not really a fair title, as I'm not really angry.  Not even really frustrated, which is the usual source of anger for me.  However, I can't bloody well figure out how to cut-and-paste text into this blog.  Once I do find out how to do it, I'm sure it will be embarrassingly easy.  In the meantime, it may improve the post ... or at least keep it shorter.

What I wanted to put in was an interesting little sermon on anger and grudges that a friend sent me.  (I wonder why; it's not like I'm known for my temper ... am I?)  It came at a time when I was thinking on a similar line, about how I review the past and wonder about those I knew.

I assume that everyone occasionally ponders what might have been.  What if you'd gone for this college major or that, dated this girl instead of the other, stuck it out in that job you didn't like, but might have made something of -- unanswerable, unrecoverable alternate timelines.  I generally keep this at bay, assuming what happened was what should have happened.  What is is what should be.  (It's very Zen ... give that thought a minute.  Or perhaps it's just very stupid.  Your choice.)

However, there's a dark underside to it.  All ex-girlfriends must, in my imagination, be tragically bereft of my company, wishing it had worked out, and ex-professional rivals either failures or empty commercial successes, wishing they had, in at least some way, my life.  It's a personal, adult version of your Mom saying the kids who teased you to tears are just jealous.  (Before you get all condemnatory of my selfish, dark vision, ask yourself if you don't, in some way, do the same thing.)

But Google and Facebook and websites let you find the truth now, and the truth can be ... disappointing.  Ex-mates are married and happy, with children and homes, and your business enemies have great jobs, with good-looking successful mates and a couple of beautiful kids.  At first, it's like fingernails on the blackboard (even as I ask myself why?  Why the need for schadenfreude?)...

When it occurred to me: That's what the whole forgive and forget thing is all about.  Take a deep breath and jump in the deep end ... and enjoy their success, their great lives.  If someone asked, you'd say you wished them the best.  And what if they have it?  Wasn't that your wish?

I don't know what clicked.  Maybe it's the Lenten thing, but in a moment I was able with that deep sigh to release them to good lives, instead of the dark, regretful Purgatory in which I had placed them in my mind.

Go forth and be happy...