Bitter/sweet

My “nostalgia analysis” post had an excellent comment – “I have noticed that nostalgia happens for certain things when you are satisfied with how things turned out. And then there is bitterness…” I am not really convinced by the first sentence, and think it’s a little more nuanced. Broadly yes, when everything turns out well, nostalgia is ‘easy’. But as I mentioned in the post, I think the mind also reconstructs and reconciles what it can. In a way, taking memories into dreams territory. A vision of near-perfectness. Probably a device used by evolution to help the organism cope, survive and thrive. Ok, that sounded cold. Moving on. It is the second sentence that really caught my attention.

“..And then there is bitterness..” Bitterness. I can remember many brushes with that phenomenon. It has made me miss several years with people, though thankfully, sanity prevailed in most cases. I reached out, and time healed. It has happened in the recent past as well. The only difference these days is that I am not blind to it, and have tried to understand it, so I can try to minimise the damage it causes. But maybe I was missing something.

I have really liked “The Newsroom“, largely because of its premise of an ideology crusade, and the nuances it brings out. I have also been able to relate to many scenes from a personal standpoint, in terms of how people behave in circumstances. The one I think that easily tops the list occurs in S01E06 – titled “Bullies”. While that episode spoke to me across different contexts, and is a favourite, the one pertinent in the context of bitterness is when Will tells his therapist Dr. Jack that he is able to intellectually understand that MacKenzie (who cheated on him) deserves to be forgiven, but is unable to do it! “So why can’t I forgive her?” I was on the edge of my seat, transfixed, because while the specifics were different, I have said these very words to D many times when we discuss these things – being able to intellectualise, but not able to forgive a person/s.

Dr. Jack solved it for me, by giving Will the answer – “Because you weren’t rejected, you were betrayed.” There is a great explanation at the end of this post on the differences between rejection and betrayal, and why we react to each differently. To quote from it, “Betrayal is the violation of an expressed or perceived trust by a person or persons with whom a person relies upon for some aspect of his or her life….disrupts the person’s established mental model by which he or she views, understands, and responds to. It disrupts his or her environment and life events, destabilizes the co-occurring psychological contracts by which one trusts, and negates important aspects of viable strategies by which the person copes with life events.” It explained an entire sequence of events for me, and made eminent sense because I lay a lot of importance on intent and trust.

Thus it is that when rejection happens in life, I have been able to take it in my stride and adapt in a very short span of time, but certain event/s have left bitterness in its wake. After I have sorted out the ‘rejection’, the mind would smooth over the bumps in the long term and present to me nostalgia. Betrayal, on the other hand, is a different ball game, and has resulted in bitterness that neither time nor my efforts have been able to heal. I do not yet know how to play it, but at least I am now more informed of the nuance.

The same can be said of bitterness. 🙂