Grievances

Grievances:

from an early age on the world invites us to share its grievances. We’re born into tribes that bear a history of being against other tribes for reasons that are seldom even remembered any longer and are never justified to be carried over so many generations. From the very beginning we’re told that we are separate from others, and yet special too, but only so long as we belong within the tribal belief system.

we’re taught to hold our grievances closely.

perhaps our earliest lesson.

from here, it’s a continuous grievance against others, and even ourselves, as we’ve learned to keep score as a means of earning our place within the world, that we succeed only by making others wrong, or placing ourselves ahead by means that keep us feeling special. It’s a cruel way of navigating through life, meaning as it always makes us feel we’re in a battle, one tribe against another, each person struggling to get ahead before someone else claims a vague sense of success before we do.

if we fail our grievances grow.

and even if we succeed we continue to keep score.

yet there’s a kinder way to live, gentle, one that doesn’t ask us to keep score or view ourselves as separate from others. It’s as simple as forgiving our every grievance, not as an act of bestowing favors and deeming…