Intent (Day 645)

Today's Stoic challenge is to "eliminate a grudge." It has an interesting example.

Have you ever had an app on your phone stop working properly? What do you usually do? Maybe restart the app. Maybe pull up a similar app. Maybe you curse at the phone, hit the home screen, and move on to something else. If it’s bad enough, maybe you delete the app altogether. But would you swear off the app only to keep it right where it is and bubble with resentment every time you scroll past it to get to something that does work? That’s absurd, right? Nobody does that. Well, that’s what a grudge looks like.

Well, I think what was missing in this example is "intent." If an app failed, it wasn't something intended to harm us. Regretfully, some people who hurt us have bad intentions. And that is what triggers the resentment. Holding a grudge or revenge is to prevent them from harming us again. And it is definitely hard to reach out and make them a friend again. The worst is when we still need to deal with them, regardless of whether it's professionally (at work) or personally (the adversary is close to our other friends or families).

Once these perpetrators hurt us, it's hard not to build a wall to protect ourselves and make us less likely to trust others again. So how do we eliminate the grudge in this case?