November 9, 2019-

One of the greatest gifts imparted to me, by my parents, is knowing not to make the same mistake twice.  In his sixth Rule for Life, Jordan Peterson alludes to  a yard full of rakes, with a slapstick comic going about, stepping on one rake after another, and whacking himself about the head repeatedly.

My difficulty with repetition of mistakes has come more from failure to generalize, to apply lessons learned from one set of mistakes to similar, but anomalous, situations.

Dr. Peterson speaks quite a bit, in this segment, about resentment.  He goes through the points many of us know, as to how resentment eats away at the person who harbours it, unless he/she works through the feeling, and draws a self-improving lesson from the incident that led to the ill will.

I have learned, over the years, to work through the matter that caused me to resent a person or group.  Without exception, my path has always led to determining, through the type of soul-searching recommended by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, what I may have done that led to the incident, and how I might not open the door to similar mishaps in the future.

Proactivity can eliminate a good many misfortunes.  Avoiding self-aggrandizement can minimize resentment of those that do come our way.  I learned this, the hard way, by being Penny’s caretaker, and not, once, thinking that the whole thing was brought on by me.  Things I would better have done differently, came to mind and were fully processed.  This has only made me a better person.  Resentment of my lot, would not have done so.