Got a Grudge?

Photo by mantasmagorical, 2007, MorgueFile.com

This girl is NOT happy. It looks as if she's mad at the world, doesn't it?

I'm sure she'd love to be happy, but what does a person have to do to achieve that?

Some of the happiest people, I think, are those who accept life as it is. They look at the good things around them with appreciation. They let go of the less than 'good' things with the idea that they learned something from them. They do not walk backward toward past hurts. Of course, this is hard to do.

Many of us are disposed to holding grudges about what he or she did to me. We can't let it go. We have to have some recompense--to balance things, we say. We let the ghost of yesterday take over today. And some of us allow that vindictive ghost to run our lives.

This will not bring harmony to family life.

Pope Francis questioned pilgrims about the harmony of their home lives at the Sunday Mass held on October 27, 2013, during the “Day for the Family” in Rome. “I would like to ask a question today. Everyone – how will you carry joy home in your heart? How’s the joy in your home? How’s the joy in your family?”

What is our answer to his question? Harmony denotes peace. Holding a grudge is hardly peaceful. Real joy comes when we accept that not every one has our best interests at heart, but that some do. And shouldn't we focus on the ones who do, rather than the ones who didn't?

What he or she did to me is in the past. No one can change the past. We have only the Present. And we can most assuredly make our Present, and possibly our Future, worse when we concentrate on a grudge. We may even destroy what is good in the here and now by our vindictiveness.

So let's turn our backs on those ghosts. Let's look around to those family and friends who bring us real joy, and concentrate on them. Then, I think we'll be able to see ourselves in the Present. We'll see ourselves as 'doing just fine.'