Put Down the Pennies

I've been working with both a mentor and a therapist for roughly three months. Between the two of them, I've been called stubborn, resentful, tightly wound, skeptical, and bitter. While none of these are compliments, they're also not false. I am those things. They weren't said to hurt me or to put me down. They were said because that's what good mentors and therapists do - help you identify the areas of yourself that need work and growth, and then they give you the tools you need to work through those areas.

When discussing resentment, my mentor said the times we get angry about the other driver who cut us off in traffic, the rude cashier at the grocery store, or the pile of dishes in the sink, we aren't angry about the other driver, the cashier, or the dishes. The feelings we express in those moments are an accumulation of all the times we've felt hurt or betrayed or left out or whatever. She said we can carry that resentment around forever, or we can choose to work through it and get rid of the extra weight it puts upon us. I began to consider this and for some reason started thinking about pennies. 

I wondered what it would be like if every time we got hurt - or whatever - we picked up a penny and carried it with us. The first one won't add a lot of weight, won't take up a lot of space in your hand, and won't interfere with most tasks or responsibilities, at least not to a great degree. But what happens when we pick up another and another and another and another. At some point, the pile gets to be too big for your hand, starts becoming uncomfortable to carry around and everything we do becomes a challenge. And if it gets too big, some of the pennies simply fall away - this is when we explode and get angry. The expression gives us a release and the chunk of resentment we're carrying once again becomes a smaller, more manageable load. We're able to keep moving forward.

But we'll also keep picking up pennies along the way. Someone else will be rude. The employee at the drive-thru will forget our fries. A friend will repeat a secret told in confidence. And before we know it, the pile becomes too big again and becomes more than we can handle and we explode. More of the pennies fall. 

We continue in this cycle until we consciously make an effort to put down the pennies. Every one of them. We have to take them one by one, identify the cause of each one, and work to see our own role in the situation. What are we really upset about? It's not about a stranger in traffic, a cashier who's had a long day, or a forgotten order of fries. 

I recently sat down and wrote about the things I'm harboring resentment over and began to work through them with my mentor. It is not fun work. Introspection is difficult, especially when it's to identify shortcomings. But I hear once you reach the other side, it's all completely worth it. The weight will be removed and you become free to move forward without an extra, unnecessary burden. 

We will probably continue to collect pennies for the rest of our lives but we don't have to carry them around forever.