Resentment's a Waste

In the 32 years I've been sober, I've tried to be compassionate to my fellow man.  And most of the time, I'm successful at it.

I'm not one who holds grudges.  I don't stay resentful at anyone for long.  And I try to practice forgiveness of those who commit even the most egregious offenses toward me.  And that's because I don't want to carry a lot of garbage around in my head.  After all, I'd much rather spend my precious time enjoying life and doing what I can to help my fellow addicts and alcoholics have better lives.

I bring this up, because for the past 32  years of my recovery – working with TLC in the recovery business – it seems like I've always had someone who was angry at me about something.  For a long time, there was a guy who had the strange idea that he owned part of TLC, simply because he was one of the first 10 residents in the program in 1992.  While he was spending some 20 years in prison he was writing letters to everyone he could think of trying to make sure that he got the part of the company he owned.  As far as I know, he hasn't had a lot of success because I don't hear anything about him anymore.  Of course one of the reasons I don't see him around is that we got a restraining order against him for two years in a row and haven't seen him since.

Then about 15 years ago, there was a gentleman who made me the topic of conversation at every 12 step meeting he attended.  He went to every governmental agency in the state, including the governor's office, the Attorney General's office, the legislature, the Environmental Protection Agency and I don't know who else, trying to put us out of business.  Whatever he was doing, it didn't work.  Because we're still here, helping people get sober and clean.

But the interesting part of it was that I had no idea who this guy was or what his problem was.  He was just someone who was very angry at me and TLC and spent a lot of his headspace and time trying to have something done about us.  I'm still curious about why he was so angry.

And just when I thought that maybe the craziness had died down for a while, a few years back another delusional person pops up to make us a target.

And the strange thing is that I'm not angry at any of these people.  In fact, I have a lot of compassion and pity for them because they're wasting their lives and precious time on this planet trying to harm those who are performing a service to the community.   Each of them could use their innate intelligence and ability to build a great life for themselves if they only did positive things – rather than looking at themselves as victims.

Because my experience has been that those who characterize themselves as victims usually live up to their self-image.

Click here to email John