Revolt, Resentment, Disbelieving, Ingratitude, Unhappiness and the Medicine of Love

Revolt, Resentment, Disbelieving, Ingratitude, Unhappiness and the Medicine of Love

Revolt and resentment live within us, ready to reveal themselves. They are a response to pain, to the cruelty of life, to affront, to death, to disillusion.

And they may blind us. Revolt and disbelieving aren’t good companions and can lead us to ingratitude. A heart full of bitterness, unable to forget offences and grievance, is also unable to enjoy the good things of life, to recognize a friendly hand, a smile, or an act of justice.

Revolt and resentment are widow’s curses, poisoning life definitively. It’s ingratitude. It’s a way of madness, in Epicurus’ words: «The life of the folly is empty of gratitude and full of anxiety…»

Against ingratitude, resentment, and the unhappiness linked to them, love is the only big solution. Just the «medicine of love» can make us happy (Ecclesiastes). Just love can lead us to re-establish harmonious links with life, destroying our resentments and making us forget the world’s cruelty.

Philosophers such as Epicurus emphasised the role of love – as friendship - in the human struggle against tendencies of resentment and ingratitude. And emphasised the necessity of a serene acceptance of the facts of life, on the framework of an ancient but yet very actual philosophy of life.

It is worth reflecting upon the words of Epicurus and Seneca on this matter:

We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been and by the recognition that it is impossible to make undone what has been done.
Epicurus, 341-270 b.C., Greek philosopher, The Extant Remains

Everything hangs on one’s thinking. (…) A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.

What difference does it make what your position in life is, if you dislike it yourself?

Not happy he who thinks himself not so.

What’s the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, or of being unhappy now just because you were then? (…) When troubles come to an end, the natural thing is to be glad.

Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.

A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear, while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

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