Serenely seeking antidote for resentment

Salary offers a spurious surrogate for measuring personal or social worth. Wondering where my pay ranks on a scale relative to co-workers occasionally preoccupies me. Now that I know, I almost wish I didn’t. One could say that the information causes resentment or one could say it compels contemplation. I choose Timothy Leary’s dictum: “Question Authority.” After that, I question myself.

Spiritual poison, envy, resentment, contempt arising from some sense of injustice sickens the soul. A character in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” ridicules American myth and self-delusion. Paraphrasing: “Americans hate themselves when they cannot live up to the belief that anyone can become rich and powerful if they simply work hard enough.” This delusional thinking dovetails with the insanity identified by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

According to AA philosophy, or at least my interpretation of it, alcoholics drink and engage in other self-destructive behavior to punish themselves for failure – or simply to obliviate about it. Those who do not believe in “a power greater than themselves” take full responsibility for their illness, inability to live up to unrealistic expectations imposed by oneself, and inability to succeed according to standards inappropriately imposed by others.

Most of us enjoy very little control over our own fates. Injustice and capriciousness pervade all our lives and indeed the planet. Generally speaking, God does not disclose Her plans for us to us. We humans constructed the concepts of fairness, justice, and the rule of law. We often forget that powers greater than ourselves prevail over human constructs and the shape of hair put to bed damp. Nature does not obey human laws or notions of justice. Rather, we must accommodate natural forces or else fall victim to them. Did anyone ask “Katrina” to behave nicely during her visit to New Orleans in 2005? Frequently, we learn important and spiritually enriching lessons by virtue of accidental circumstance. Human greed, favoritism, accidents of birth order, and the dénouement of history represent forces beyond the control of individuals. I might control my own impulses but not those of others. Evolution wired us in certain ways and predisposes us to certain behaviors. We grab all we can because our ancestors experienced chronic food insecurity. We live in a changed world.

Mom found a tee-shirt that says, “Lost in thought, please send search party.” That provoked me to imagine a band of merry psychologists with Rorschach tests, cocktails, confetti, and sniffer dogs. Ambiguity availed by multiple interpretations of practically everything we might say bestows the gift of surprising humor. Wandering down the rabbit hole of one train of thought sets the taste buds of our sense of inference for one sensation and a strategic pause or smirk from the knowing interlocutor springs the trap and the double entendre catches us off guard. The delight in irony or absurdity may require guidance or cajoling from someone with different experiences and perspectives.

People in recovery from addiction often admit that their best ideas and efforts yielded sub-optimal results; “We were so ‘cool’ it almost killed us.” With that track record in mind, it made good sense to surrender our will and our lives over to a higher power and a program of recovery. Recovery group meetings often begin and end with the Serenity Prayer for good reason. Discerning what I can change from what I cannot remains the most challenging, vexing, and confusing mental exercise I ever face.

That I took this or that course in college, obtained this or that job, won or didn’t the hearts and minds of these or those people remain accomplished facts today that I cannot undo. I might have wanted a certain thing while in high school, college, or early in my working career that never materialized. Failure to achieve my aspirations or expectations does not make me a failure as a person. It simply makes me a different person from who I envisioned before. I don’t know the mind of God and judge with suspicion those who claim to. I continue searching for the “secret decoder ring,” but haven’t found it yet.

Perhaps some friends would convene with me an organization called, “Peregrinating Inquisitively Disgruntled Employees” (PIDE). I did not misspell “pride” but the Spanish word for “ask.” Searching for the secret decoder ring with friends might yield better results than searching alone.

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