grudges

It's amazing how many grudges I hold.

I always told myself that I was a nice guy, an open-minded dude with a soft side.

There is an aspect of that which is true, but it doesn't take into account my mean streak.

The majority of my mean streak is consumed by my long memory. The same faculties that allow me to recall pop cultural trivia and inconsequential minutiae effectively also causes me to not relent from my personal grievances and vendettas.

Although I very rarely indulge in it, my mind brims with revenge scenarios constantly. Every once in a while, something happens to someone that I am secretly angry at, and I sit back bemused and confident, attributing their bad luck to 'karmic justice'...

What a load of shit on my part. It's like those Born Again Christians who are smug in their belief that everyone else is going to Hell except for themselves.


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Every day since Sunday, I have remembered someone that I cut out of my life simply because they said or did something that pissed me off and diminished any respect I may have had for them.

I am also remembering some of the beefs that were so petty and insignificant to begin with that I actually forgot about them for a while. When I would get wind of them again, I'd renew my anger at the person who wronged me, even though I hadn't wished them ill for some time.

I remember my last steady girlfriend, and how it was me-- not her --who broke it off, simply because she told me about the time she had sex with her friend's fiancee... the day before they were to be married.

I never told Jeanie the real reason why I wanted to end it. I never told her that I couldn't trust her, and that I was afraid she'd do the same thing to me at some point.

Granted, she wasn't repentant about her past deed, which caused me more alarm than the admission itself, so maybe I was justified in my aversion to her.

But I should've been honest with her, and I should've acknowledged my fear so that she could understand what bothered me.

She and I had a good thing. It was hard to break up with her. In order to refrain from reneging on my will, I kept a notebook that documented all of the bad things she and I encountered during our short but passionate relationship.

Any time I felt bad or missed her, I pulled out that yellow notebook and re-read my entries. It was a great way to remind myself of what kind of up-and-down roller-coaster we were on.

But I wonder if it didn't cause me to ignore my instincts. Every time my heart longed for her, I would read the notebook in order to steady my resolve. Every time I told myself "Man, you care about her... you should just let it go..." I would pull out the poems and recall how wrong she did me sometimes.

I'm sure she left our relationship wondering just who the hell I was, and why I was so unwilling to take a chance.

She doesn't talk to me now. It's been 6 years since I last saw her.

I used to think she just hated me, but something tells me that I broke her heart and now she is the one who cannot forgive.

It's OK. I deserve it. I'm not going to try and get in touch with her. Live and let live.


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I am curious to see if this is just another phase or if I am truly sincere about wanting to forgive and forget.

It's not as difficult as it seemed at first, but that can be deceptive. Just because I am embracing the concept of letting bygones be bygones doesn't mean it will last for very long. I'm sure that somewhere down the line someone will do something to me that I will find unforgivable in the least.

That will be the true test.

I'm just not ready to turn the other cheek 100% yet. I can do it, and have done it on many occasions... but lately my first reaction has been to smack someone back if they smack me first.

I have a lot of pride, and when it gets wounded I get defensive. But my pride doesn't allow me to go apeshit in the way that I'd prefer, so instead I get confrontational and rude. I mask it all in the pretense of "lively debate" or "open-minded discussion" but really I am finding ways to communicate my ideas in the coldest, iciest manner possible.

I'm sick of making people feel bad for making human mistakes. It's not my business or responsibility to do that. It's not my job to sit there and tell people, "I told you so" or any of that self-righteous bullcrap.

So what have I been doing to train myself to forgive?

Just like with the yellow notebook, I am resorting to a popular medium in order to reinforce my will. However, in addition to writing it out I am also trying to expose myself to works of art that employ the theme of forgiveness.

I've been listening to "A Quick One (While He's Away)" by The Who. I wrote about that song in May of 2005, in a short post that barely scratched the surface of what that song means to me personally.

It was an early attempt at a rock opera for a young Pete Townshend. At the urging of their producer, Kit Lambert, Townshend penned a ten-minute long suite comprised of six different song ideas. They were short of songs for the next LP and this measure was done to fill out the album.

The six parts of the suite were as follows:

The a cappella introduction, "Her Man's Gone"

"Crying Town", which sets the scene by introducing the main character, a woman who is sad because her lover is far away and has been gone for a long while.

"We Have A Remedy" is a rousing chorus of voices (presumably the woman's friends) urging her to temporarily hook up with studly Ivor the Engine Driver, in order to get some relief.

"Ivor The Engine Driver" is a humorous interlude where Ivor speaks for himself, announcing his lecherous intentions in a thick Cockney accent with an English music hall backing.

"Soon Be Home" flirts with country & western music, the only lyrics being the title. It shows that the woman's lover is on his way back to his beloved.

But the part I am focusing on-- which also happens to be the most famous and recognizable part of the song --is the finale "You Are Forgiven", which resolves the conflict climactically: The lover returns, so glad to see his beloved again; she in turn confesses right off the bat to her infidelity and explains why she did it.

And then he sings to her, "You are forgiven" and The Who repeat this refrain over and over until the finish of the song, when Pete Townshend declares "We're all forgiven!" before ending the epic tale.

The refrain is divided between the three Who vocalists: lead singer Roger Daltrey handles the middle register and harmony while Pete goes as low as he can with the melody; that leaves the late, great John Entwistle (aka "The Ox") to deliver the excellent falsetto.

Every time I hear this part of the song (it was featured in the movie Rushmore) tears well up in my eyes. Just thinking about it sends chills up my spine. Maybe all those instances in the past were signs that I was longing to forgive the people who have hurt me in my life, but I just couldn't bring myself to admit it.

I'm sure Pete Townshend wrote the song about a girlfriend he used to have-- he addressed the topic later on in the full-blown rock opera Tommy: Captain Walker comes home from WWI to find his wife in bed with another man. In a fit of rage, he kills the man in front of his son whom he has never seen, Tommy Walker. This causes Tommy to psychosomatically become deaf dumb and blind.

The consequences of jealousy and rage, according to this treatement of the infidelity theme, are far-ranging and more harmful than we think.

Pete also approached the same subject matter in the early hit "I Can See For Miles" but in a different tone. Rather than being forgiving, his tone in "Miles" is one of watchful paranoia: "I know you've deceived me now here's a surprise/ I know that you have 'cause there's magic in my eyes/ I can see for miles and miles..."

Is it any wonder that "Miles" is my all-time favorite Who song? Or that "Miles" was written before "A Quick One" while Tommy was written afterwards?

I will always love that song, but for now "A Quick One" is my new favorite. Let's hope it stays like that for a long time coming.