Eating my own poison apple
Eating my own poison apple
"I felt so wronged, so injured. I started cultivating a seed of a grudge, which started bearing fruit."
Recently, I was deeply hurt by somebody. By somebody I love.
I have found that hurt from those we love is the deepest kind of pain.
It does not matter what the details are. Details do not apply to universal propositions like pain and hurt. We have all had it. We have all endured it.
It seemed a great pain. At least, it was a great pain to me. It seemed an unjustified sort of pain.
Objectively, I had been wronged. That much was clear. I did not deserve this pain; yet it was done to me. It seemed unfair to me.
And when I started thinking about the unfairness, anger rose inside me.
Deadly cocktail
Anger and sadness make a deadly Molotov cocktail.
Driven by rawness and emotion, I hastily convened a court. It was a makeshift courtroom, but it would do.
Of course, I was readily prepared with my prosecution. I had been working on my opening statement for quite some time. My cross-examination questions were sharp and thought out.
Unfortunately, the accused refused to be arraigned before my tribunal. We were also missing a judge.
No fear, I could gladly be the judge. I would be objective, of course - even though the accused was absent. The facts were clear. Justice would surely prevail. For me, that is.
And as I set about conducting my private trial in the privacy of my heart, I remembered the words of one of the English language's finest spokesmen: William Blake. It is a simple poem, and it starts like this:
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
I felt so self-righteous. I felt so wronged, so injured. I nursed a grudge. I started cultivating a seed of it, which grew to a tree, which started bearing fruit.
But the fruit was poisoned.
Bitterness and unforgiveness can form a deadly poison for the soul.
Sadly, bitterness and unforgiveness very often become the poison that we start administering to ourselves.
We keep injecting the apple with poison hoping our foe will eat the shiny, red apple.
But we are really injecting ourselves with the poison.
Self-righteousness
Each injection makes us feel ever more self-righteousness.
This is the great trick of bitterness that produces self-righteousness: a bitter heart poisons itself and then blames the original act for it.
I often think that the level of our self-righteousness is the distance between the moral high-ground we assume and the depths of the anger that we feel.
If that is true, I was very self-righteous.
Fortunately, I remembered William Blake.
I made an appointment with this person who had hurt me so.
I was able to tell my wrath.
My friend was able to point out where I was wrong and where I had also caused injury.
Fortunately the poison apple tree that had begun growing got mortified by truth and honesty and forgiveness.
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
I am so glad I told my wrath to my friend. It saved the person becoming my foe.
Life is too short to inject ourselves with the poison of bitterness and unforgiveness.
The grave danger of growing a tree that bears shiny, red, poison apples — seemingly aimed at revenge on our foes — is that we start eating the fruit ourselves.
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Anger and sadness make a deadly Molotov cocktail.