The Cost of Carrying Resentments

I have been studying a variety of modalities in my quest to rebuild my life after being in Colombia.

It has taken me several years to discover some new things, even at this age.

And a few are old ideas revisited.

About a decade ago I went to a Radical Forgiveness Ceremony in Phoenix, taught by Colin Tipping.

There I learned the importance of forgiving all those people that I had viewed as "doing me wrong," or that I wanted to blame for some negative aspect of my life. It was a huge shift for me and I made a leap forward in my personal growth.

But clearly it wasn't enough. Today in another class I was advised that failing to completely release those 'old feelings,' that a re-telling the stories of those events only perpetuates the negative energy and it sticks to you/me. There is another aspect to forgiveness and that is 'forgetness.'

So I have an assignment this month; to list all those people I forgave for something and for once and for all to release the event or memory into the cosmos so I am clear of it forever.

After my mother died, it took me four years to address and bring out a negative thing with someone that was preventing me from fully grieving her death. What a relief when it was released!

Recently I had the occasion at a family event to see a man I was married to for almost eight years. We  created two wonderful children who are now two fabulous adults.  We were able to laugh and joke and be the two individuals we needed to be for the circumstances, with a few shared memories to pass on. I hope he felt as I did, that we were a valued part of the tapestry of the woven history with nothing disagreeable to mar the joyous event.

But there are other folks in my past with whom I need to finish things and forget...maybe not forget them, but certainly forget whatever might be negative between us.

If every resentment could actually be weighed, I wonder if it would be like that albatross from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, where the psychological burden of (in this story) killing a bird of good luck becomes a curse to the sailor telling the story.

You have probably heard the expression "like an albatross around his/her neck," meaning the problem is so weighty it is a heavy burden or penance (either actually or imagined). The albatross is actually quite a large bird; it has a wing span of 11 feet! So a dead one would weigh a lot and stink, too.

So it is with resentments.

I''m working on them, and in days to come perhaps I will have some more stories to share. But probably nothing quite so dramatic as the Rime was... read it recently?

Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks

Had I from old and young !

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

Absence makes the heart...

Solmar reservoir is full right now; source of my water.

Have you missed me?

I've missed you, my dear readers. But my life has been significantly challenged with a car that needed a new transmission. Which, once it was fixed, needed to go back in again because the frammis was rubbing up against the jixmas and causing the gears to wobble and they needed to replace the flabgesty so that didn't happen anymore.

(If you didn't understand that, it's because I didn't either... all I know now is that it is finally fixed right.)

These two segments of four-day repairs had me living somewhere other than in my own house with good internet access, so I didn't even try to write here.

Spring has come early to the Olympics and bees are buzzing around all kinds of flowering flowers, shrubs and trees. But our water situation is not good. The mountains only received about 20 percent of the snow required. (It must have all been shipped east to Boston and points north!)

I continue to enjoy the delights of a loving relationship with F and the challenges of it as well.

But if there is anything I am significantly grateful for it is hearing news that my 17-year old grandson is OK after totaling his vehicle yesterday.

Deer are boldly coming into neighborhoods to feed on
new plant growth; they are fearless for the most part.

As I listen to the birds and watch the bees, I realize how precariously we are connected to life and how if this accident had happened in any other way I might be grieving deeply.

And I completely understood how my daughter was feeling, because my own 17-year old son did just that same thing years ago, causing his angels to work overtime as well.

Perhaps boys of 17 should not be driving because they do not appear to have the same abilities to multi-task that girls of that age do. A glance away at something else, just long enough to distract and require over-correction can be the instant of change.

It is a reminder that when we are behind the wheel, whether alone or driving with others, we have a huge responsibility to pay attention to the task at hand - driving. No texting, no getting directions, no passing toys to toddlers, no turning around to see where something is in the back seat, etc.

Bus drivers are not allowed to even have music on their busses because of the potential distraction, and they are carrying upwards of 40 people to their destinations.

There are so many things to pull our attention away... personal concerns, business issues, weather challenges and global news to suggest a few areas. As parents and grandparents we have the obligation to add to our instruction repertoire the importance of staying focused.

"Be here now," not be partly here and partly there... because your absence from my life will make my heart very heavy.