Late night nursing

I nurse grudges. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I accept it like I accept gravity. I've tried to rise above nursing grudges by telling myself that it hurts me more than it hurts anyone else, or that only I can make myself unhappy. But I also know that you should focus on your strengths - and boy, is nursing grudges my strength. The problem is that vengeance fantasies make it very hard for me to sleep, so I read.

I'm reading a wonderful book right now called Blubberland: the Dangers of Happiness, not that I ever have to worry about it, but I like to be prepared...
Anyway, I continued with the book this morning, and the author Farrelly makes an interesting point (many interesting points - I recommend reading it) about the word "want". I doubt she's the first, but it's my first encounter with the idea. She points out that there has been a shift in meaning with the word want over the last 100 years. Want used to mean need - as in "people living in want". At the turn of the last century, if you were living in want, you were damned poor, unable to keep body and soul together, and actually in need of calories. Today, "want just means want". I want, I want, I want, because really, we want for nothing.

But then she references a writer I have never heard of, Michael Bywater, and now I'm in love. Get this: "obese, sportswear-clad, snarling crop-haired families yoked in greed and hatred". What a great image - yoked in greed and hatred. So I immediately google Bywater and find his blog of vitriol (because that is just what I need at 10:00 in the morning). This time he gets me in his crosshairs a few times and I cringe. Interesting. And then I find an excerpt from his book Big Babies.

The crucial difference is my grandfather's lack of self-consciousness, and that self-consciousness is a hallmark of the perpetual, infantilised adolescents we have all become, monsters of introspection hovering twitchily on the edge of self-obsession, occasionally aware that the life that exists only to be examined is barely manageable; barely, indeed, a life.

Boy is he good. I'm no longer in his crosshairs, he's got a damned missile locked on me. Oh sure, I'm not as bad as some of the other big babies, but this is not an excerpt to read when you are in the middle of a three day long pout at perceived injustice. Adults don't get to shout "Not Fair". So, chagrin, I've stopped pouting. It's good to get whacked upside the head by a real grown-up every now and again (which is not my way of saying I support corporal punishment).

Now, there still must be vengeance, but I'm going to plot it cheerfully and get over the injustice. Like a big girl.