Premeditated Resentments
Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash
Have you ever heard this saying? “Expectations are premeditated resentments.”
It’s common in recovery rooms, where resentments are a big deal. Someone who wants to stay sober generally has to put a lot of effort into rewiring their neural pathways, training their brain to stay away from the slippery slope of resentments.
It’s a priority since addiction tends to be about a desire to escape. When reality makes you miserable, seeking to escape it is a logical learned behavior–largely because it works. I didn’t drink myself into oblivion back in the day because I felt like blowing up my life. I drank myself into oblivion because it worked better than any other tool I had at my disposal…until it didn’t.
So, if you want to stay sober, you focus on building a life you don’t want to escape from. Exo facto, it’s important to learn how to go through the world with greater equanimity, not resenting every itty bitty thing that goes wrong.
It’s a neat little trick. Handy for people who could quite literally die if they allow resentments to pile up, but also useful for anyone who happens to be a human living on Earth.
Now shall we talk about how miserably I failed at this the other day?
The scene: the Bangkok airport. The source of the resentment: a ticketing counter agent.
Do you want to hear what this witch did? (Prepare to be scandalized.)
She made me pay for my luggage and then she had the nerve to put me in an aisle seat.
Can you believe it?!
I know. You’re probably clutching your pearls.
The challenge I faced is that I have gotten used to people being exceptionally nice to me. And, instead of going through the world in a non-attached way, I turned it into an expectation.
So, when this woman followed standard operating procedure instead of treating me the way I wanted to be treated, my expectation/premeditated resentment became an actual resentment. I expected her to do what the ticketing counter agent had done the night before, which was to charge me for a 20kg bag ($30) instead of charging me per kilo ($95). But she didn’t.
Then, I boarded my plane, seeing empty row after empty row, I was baffled by the seat she put me in. Why did she put me in a full row, people all around me, when I could be in any of these open rows?!
For all I know, this woman was worried that I’d be lonely. Maybe her personal preference is to have someone’s hand to grasp when the flight takes off and lands and she didn’t want me to be hand-to-grasp-less.
But there I was, bitter. Resenting that this woman didn’t treat me EXACTLY how I wanted to be treated…for an hour-long flight, as I flew my what-a-charmed-life self to a tropical paradise.
The real thing going on is that, in the eleven years since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve gotten used to feeling good. When I did a meditation training years ago, they said that the goal of a meditation practice is to walk through the world as if you’re wearing a raincoat, building up a buffer so that the daily stressors of life roll right off your back.
But at the moment, I’m not a particularly resilient version of myself. Living in China (more specifically, the realities of living in the only country that still has closed borders due to a zero-Covid policy) is kicking my behind.
It’s kicking the behind of every foreigner I know who lives there, which is sadly comforting. I want my friends to feel good, but there’s comfort in knowing that I’m simply a human having a human experience, not somehow defective.
Fortunately, I have a toolkit at my disposal to help me shift the way I’m feeling. In recovery, the second thing you learn (after don’t pick up, no matter what) is that your state of being must come first. People in recovery are taught to prioritize “being spiritually fit” ahead of—well, everything.
When I feel off, like I do at the moment, I go back to the basics. I turn to tried and tested spiritual practices to help me return to a place of inner peace, then I navigate the realities of being a human in a sometimes complicated world.
State of being first, aligned action second.
Because, I assure you, no one (and I mean no one) wants the version of Keely who gets her knickers in a twist about a perfectly pleasant ticketing counter experience to be driving the show.
And, while I wouldn’t particularly recommend driving your life off a cliff, I would wholeheartedly recommend the spiritual principles of recovery to everyone.
We live in a culture that seems to be about action, action, action. But, in my experience, we make problems worse if we do, do, do from a place of inner turmoil. Maybe it’d be better for everyone, future generations included, if we gave ourselves the space we need to feel good first. To act from a place of peace and contentment, not turmoil and despair.
Or maybe it’s all just a load of hooey and we’re best served by depleted, bitter and resentful people in leadership roles deciding the fate of our planet and species. What do I know?
Wishing you a charmed, spiritually fit and resentment-free life,
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