Grievance: A real or imagined wrong or other cause for complaint or protest, especially unfair treatment; a cause of distress felt to afford reason for complaint or resistance.
"And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. Raymond Carver
Somewhere between ignoring the past and wallowing in it there is a place where we can learn from what has happened to us, including the inevitable mistakes we have made, and integrate this knowledge into our plans for the future. Inevitably, this process requires some exercise in forgiveness - that is, giving up some grievance to which we are entitled.
I like how the definition of grievance always includes the intimation that the wrong may not be real. Boy, for people who like to bitch, to find reasons to complain that are found outside of who we are, this definition is sweet, sweet as honey. Here are some suggested synonyms for grievance: bellyaching, bemoaning, bewailing, carping, complaining, gnashing of teeth, mutter, squawk, whine, Jesus, this sounds like most of my shares at meetings . . . These are not kind synonyms. We all know the feeling of being cornered by someone who bitches about everything and wishing that it would just end, already. All of us need to get stuff off our chests but the idea is to get to the place where the stuff is actually off your chest. Re-litigating stuff over and over just gets boring after a while for the listener.
A capacity for laughing is one of the two characteristics that separate us from other animals. The other, as far as I know, is the ability to contemplate my own death. I think the connection between these two uniquely human attributes that cuts to the heart of the great paradox of my life: Is it possible to be happy in the face of my own mortality?
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