Hajja Salesjana October - December 2018

2 1 responsibility onto others to meet our needs. Perhaps we are so used to caring for everyone else, that we do not even know how to ask persons close to us about what we need. It is possible that we might feel insecure about our worth, so we imagine that people are simply not interested in meeting our needs. Maybe we take other people’s sensitivity to us as an indication that we are loved and cared for, and we thus feel unloved when the other person does not realise what we need. In more severe cases, a person might be so used to meeting everybody else’s needs, that they lose touch with their own needs. Obviously, this is not to say that there are not times when it is true that life is really hard, or that we are treated unfairly by others. However, going into a place of resentment seems to solidify our role as a victim, leading us to feel stuck and helpless in an endless pattern of unsatisfied needs. All too often, this also implies that we are thus unable to empathise with the person who we feel is causing us to feel resentful. For instance, imagine one man’s resentment at his wife for insisting that they go out together all the time, rather than go out separately sometimes. He might accuse her of being clingy and controlling; he might feel trapped and stifled. He might feel envious of his friends who are able to go out together and have fun. Yet, he does not discuss his feelings with his wife. He imagines that she might be offended and angry, so he prefers burying his own resentment. He feels bitter about not feeling free to meet his friends. He becomes withdrawn and passive aggressive. If he had initiated a conversation with his wife, he might have learnt that she was neglected as a child, and therefore tends to interpret his solo activities as a hint that he is going to abandon her as well. The man might have understood her behaviour better. The wife might have comprehended his feelings of missing out when he is not with friends. Ideally, the couple would speak about their feelings in a safe environment, and come to an understanding that they love and care for each other, and help each other meet their respective needs rather than expecting the other person to intuit them. Does this sound complicated? It is actually simpler than it sounds. What it requires is acceptance that the other person is a separate being, and will therefore have a different way of seeing and experiencing things. As adults, if we need something, we need to ask for it. Similarly, when we want to understand the other person’s point of view. Other persons are thus not an extension of us, and we need to treat them as persons who have a different mind and experience to us. What we also overlook when we are submerged in resentment is that people do care for us in a myriad of ways, perhaps in different ways to the ones we expect. Resentment, therefore, puts us in danger of being ungrateful and unappreciative of the efforts that other people actually do make in our regard. Let us, therefore, try to adopt a grateful and empathic stance. It might change our lives!