Columns One and Two of the Resentment Inventory

This talk explains how to get started with columns one and two of your resentment inventory.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi everybody, my name is Tom, and I'm an alcoholic. Generally speaking, sponsors ask people to start their inventory by completing their first column. That means listing all of the people, institutions, and principles that made them resentful. Some of this is easy. Who made me mad? My parents, siblings, relatives, friends, partners, spouses, etc. Then we could add on teachers, other students, coworkers, religious folks such as ministers and rabbis, maybe the odd professional like a doctor or lawyer or CPA, your boss, the president. In my life, there's never been a president who didn't give me a resentment, whether I voted for him or not. For many of us, anyone we ever encountered could go on the list, especially if they ever exerted authority or disagreed with us. Sometimes the so-called sainted folks should be on the list. That would include your children and the family dog. But wait, don't you have any problem with any of these people? You love your mom? Well, I love my mom, but that doesn't mean I never had a resentment toward her. Here's an abiding spiritual axiom. Your spiritual path must always lead you toward the truth, not away from it. If you don't have any anger, it probably means you don't have permission to be angry. Our culture teaches us that we should be kind, helpful, and never fucking angry. But we are. Sometimes it helps to go with gentler words. How about annoyed by, interfered with, bothered by, or irritated by? The other thing, of course, is that we don't start off with a resentment inventory. By the time we get to doing the fourth step, we've already learned that we want to be spiritual giants who don't get pissed off by others or external events. Some people find this difficult. They have to chip away at the shell they built around resentments which keep them safe. Other people think they have ten billion resentments. My sponsor used the example of birds pooping on your car's windshield as a resentment he didn't want me to write about. A good rule of thumb is found in the word itself. Resentment derives from sentiment as in feeling. Just like rereading means going back and reading something again, resentiment means going back and feeling something again, and again, and again. You get the draft. Doug A. always suggests you just write down the names of everyone you know, which is not a bad idea. But let's shift focus from people to institutions, principles, or ideas. Here are some institutions you might have resentments toward. The court system, religion, schools, medical care, the government, the IRS, politicians, gun lovers, gun haters, AA meetings, other twelve-step meetings, a particular media company, academics, a political party, fast food, health food, Microsoft, Apple, gas companies, other utilities, exercise, people who don't exercise, traffic, other drivers, your phone, computers, and much, much more. I could pretty much go on forever, but you know that. What about principles and ideas? There's humility, marriage, fairness, inequality, service, mathematics, revisionism, originalism, compromise, ethics, logic, emotions, commitment, psychology, with and without mention of therapy, flexibility, inflexibility, and citizenship. Again, I could pretty much go on forever. This is the first column. But while we're at it, let's remember we don't get points for quantity. And just because you were annoyed by something three months ago doesn't mean it has to go in your inventory today. That said, we're hoping that our inventory will be fearless and thorough. In other words, fact-facing and fact-finding. We're trying to find a balance in between an inventory which is sparse and leaves out resentments that should be addressed, and an inventory that is so exhaustive that it's also exhausting beyond the point of being useful. I remember meeting a guy years ago in the South Bay of Los Angeles. He was so proud of his inventory because he had over a thousand resentments. Unfortunately, you don't get points for the number of resentments you have. In the long run, we write down our resentments so that we can remove all that is blocking us from our higher power. Some of my resentments are trivial. I don't like it when people park poorly at the grocery store, so it's hard for me to get in and out of my car. But I don't stay up all night thinking about it. I let that stuff go naturally. That's the re in resentment. If I can let it go, I should. If I try to let something go and it keeps coming back, then I had better write about it. If it happened years ago and I still remember it, then I have to write about it. Column one is really important. Nothing makes sense without it. That said, column two determines exactly what's appropriate for columns three and four. Column two is what they did to me, damn them. In other words, their crime against Tom. Sometimes I come across people who have these long and wordy column twos that seem to me uh they're a little um well, it was a dark and stormy night. Wind swept across the jagged hills. I remember that during my childhood I never really slept all that well on evenings like this. I was feeling a little hungry and wished I hadn't just pecked away at my dinner. During this part of the winter I regretted my move to the tundra. I thought of how my father was raised in Illinois and cursed his memory. Chilled I rose from the drafty living room and moved into our bedroom, and there it was, the bedroom window was open, when it was but ten degrees outside. My lovely wife, Susan, looked up at me from her reading and asked, When are we getting up tomorrow? This is not a helpful second column. There's all kinds of detail that distract from the main purpose. Sounds like other resentments are buried in this column too, including my father, winter, and whatever kept me from my evening meal. Here's my shortened version. Column one, my wife. Column two, leaving the window open. When I write my column twos, I make a concerted effort to only include the part that was essential to the resentment and leave out everything else. Terse is helpful. Wordy makes my work harder later on. And this is a place where the big bug is less than helpful. Rumor has it that the founders were squabbling over how to do inventory when it was written, leading to ambiguity. If so, we're doing a fine job in AA continuing the disagreement, but I digress. In the resentment on page 65 that starts with my employer, column one is clear, but column two has at least three different causes. Calling me unreasonable, threatening to fire me, and accusing me of stealing. For me, that's three separate resentments. Each one needs to be written independently because they will have different third columns and fourth columns. That's why we break down column two so carefully. And even as I say that, I want to remind you that for now, getting column one and column two done is our entire mission. We won't start in the third column until we have them done. So let's let it go for today. My name is Tom, and I'm an alcoholic. More soon.