Bitterness

Just heard from a friend who is having difficulties with a group of people I used to supervise.  They were very difficult with me, resisting any change I suggested.  When we were able to accomplish some new initiatives, they did their best to punish me, then anyone who they thought had collaborated with me. It reminded me about bitterness, and what I have come to believe causes it.  Every time I think of this topic, I remember a line I heard in a movie while flipping through the channels.  It was a television movie about a group of African-American  women who had grown up together, making the best of their lives.  A newcomer to the group looks a particularly negative woman and says "you must have been really pretty before your personality got out to your face."  I knew exactly what she meant.

I have been bitter about things, but I tend not to carry it around actively wherever I go. I have come to the conclusion that bitterness is an internal phenomenon, not put there from external agents or events. We tend to think we are bitter about things, as if they planted the emotion in our hearts, and until those external things change, make reparations, or are forgotten, we have the right to harbor the associated bitterness. The sheer fact that such a malignant force can thrive inside of us for so long, makes me believe it is at home there, the place of its birth.

I believe there are two emotions wrapped into the singular term of bitterness - anger and shame.  We become upset about something someone does or something that happens to us, then later feel the shame of our anger when we expose or indulge in it.  I believe we become more upset with a person for the fact that they have betrayed this inner weakness, than for the crime or offense they perpetrated against us.  Long term anger and shame then begin to generalize themselves in our identity, eventually to the point where they affect the way we perceive the world, the expectations we have for future events.  We then look for people to punish, to hold accountable for this ugliness inside us. It is a cancerous spiral.

As I said earlier, I am bitter at times, but I now take ownership for that complex emotion, and task myself to deal with it accordingly.  I have not yet reached the stage where my internal disease dictates my apprehension and embrace of my environment.  I am thankful for that.