I held a secret grudge for many years against a young man whom I overheard jeering, and saying I was “crazy” at a teenage party. This was right  after my older sister had a mental breakdown that required hospitalization.  His words were like a razor across my heart. There was a huge stigma surrounding mental illness in those days (still is). His taunts reinforced the assumption that I was “tarred with the same brush” as my sister, as the saying goes. Thank God there was no Facebook, or I might have been bullied into suicide.  Soon after, I went away to college and started a new life in Chicago upon graduation.

Fast forward: twenty years later.  I’m back in my hometown with a new job, and I’m seeing this guy at public events and social gatherings more often than I would like.  At first, I managed to avoid him.  But then I would see him again, and the knot in my stomach told me I was still holding a grudge for that long ago incident. It was not pleasant; I hadn’t felt that way for a long time, so I took another look at this man, and realized he wasn’t really a monster, just an ordinary guy fighting serious health problems and a failing business. He had probably forgotten making  such cruel remarks, and  hopefully, he had matured enough that he would not do it again.

Then I remembered the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Hate is too great a burden to bear, so I chose love.” I won’t say I began to love my former detractor, but carrying a grudge was too great a burden for me to bear, so I let it go.

The scary thing about grudges is that they become a self defeating obsession. https://medium.com/productivity-revolution/6-reasons-why-holding-grudges-makes-you-unhappy-7e2198de26fe In the case of the Annapolis shooter, he  preferred killing 5 people and living the rest of his life in prison, to letting go of that grudge.