A year and a half ago I posted an entry on my blog on Schadenfreude:
I’m revisiting it today. I wrote this: “When I heard that Trump had Covid I celebrated. I hoped that he would die. I don’t hate Trump. His image, his presence, his gestalt, though physically distant from me, has occupied so much of the space behind my eyes in the last five or six years, replacing all that I might have thought about, enjoyed, appreciated, and loved.
The choice was mine. With a more disciplined mind I could have sent him on his way, but I didn’t. I could have skipped over the political news when he appeared (Someone created an app that replaced his image with that of a cat. It was funny. For a while.). I could have avoided political conversations. Would I actually derive pleasure from his demise? His death would be like passing a kidney stone that was descending over a six year period—excruciating pain followed by blessed relief. Not happiness, just relief. sweet indulgent relief.”
What’s new today focuses on my relationship with my ex daughter-in-law, Rachel. Over the past several years I never wished her any harm, nor would I ever experience any joy for any ills she might encounter. Still, disappointment, frustration, and a host of other bad feelings thrived in the hospitable environment in my mind. Jadyne and I remember my saying, “I’m over my bad feelings about Rachel. I’m free of them.” I wasn’t.
We had to pick up Jennifer’s keys at her house last Sunday, and Rachel had been living there while the Geens had been traveling in Mexico. It was convenient for us to pick them up on our way home from a movie, but Jennifer asked if we could delay an hour, an inconvenience to us. We knew that Rachel didn’t want to see us, but to avoid a five second key pickup, I found it intolerable. I lost my temper.
I felt bad at night, recognizing that I still harbored bad feelings about her, regardless of my earlier claims that I had gotten over them. Sunday morning I sent her this text:
And last, from my earlier post on Schadenfreude:
“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
I learned from this. It’s not enough to say that something no longer bothers me. By actively joining in its expulsion from the mind chains are released. I’m not patting myself on the back for having written this. I’m simply joyful that I put into action something that I understood intellectually to be true. Without the action, the text, nothing would have changed.
This had nothing to do with Rachel. It had everything to do with me.