A true story
Being Grateful to People Who Have Wronged Us Badly
Gratitude is not only meant for those who are good to us
I am big on gratitude. Big in my heart. Big in my mind. I don’t forget, ever, even the little things done for me, given to me, shared with me.
But I am, perhaps, more grateful to people who have hurt me, harmed me; people whose actions and attitudes are aimed at feeding their ego, nurturing their selfishness, or being just who they are, a horrible person.
A great illustration — if I may call this example exemplary — is what a mother did to her eight children. The eldest was 13 years old, the youngest less than a year old.
Six sisters and two brothers abandoned by a mother who ran away with a younger man.
As fate would have it, this mother — my mother, actually — returned to us, her children, when we were young adults. She needed us. Her life had fallen apart mainly due to her being reckless and unfaithful.
By that time, all eight of us were managing our lives as best we could. Maybe not yet very stable but my siblings and I were getting there. Hard work did not faze me and my siblings. And dedication to building a good, stable family life was our goal, which we all achieved.
But this mother whom each of my siblings and I are taking care of, living with any of us as she pleases, continues with her unpleasant attitude.
She is so divisive, always creating discord and sowing misunderstanding between and amongst her children.
She is quite inventive at this that I harboured untold pain in my heart, for many years, because of what my sister allegedly said.
This sister, to whom I entrusted the care of my children when I lived and worked overseas, supposedly complained incessantly, according to our mother; that looking after my children was like hell.
It turned out that it was not true.
It turned out that Mother had been concocting untruths not only between me and my favoured sibling, but also between my other sisters and brothers.
Imagine the grudges that festered in our hearts because of those lies.
When we found out Mother’s twisted way of sowing resentment amongst her children, I encouraged my siblings to simply ignore any hurtful thing she concocts. Just laugh it off, I said.
It wasn’t easy, for sure. And one day, my brother (the elder one) could no longer take it.
Mother was spreading gossip in the neighbourhood about my brother’s wife.
It was the last straw.
A lesson in life
As soon as I heard about my brother stewing in anger over the matter, I went to his house. It was late. I just arrived from a corporate meeting in Manila, and was very tired. From discussions. From the horrendous traffic.
But I was not too tired to give him this gratitude lesson. A lesson that I had shared and would be sharing over time to my other siblings, separately, when they were at the end of their tether dealing with an extremely unmotherly mother.
It is a lesson that has guided me in my rather long life.
Thankfulness and gratitude
We should be grateful for what Mother did to us, and continue to give, I said to my sibling.
She gave us life, I said further, and is that not enough to be grateful?
I added, “But the greatest thing we should be grateful for was the lesson we learned when she abandoned us. We learned to be strong, to work hard, to build a stable family life with nary a thought of abandoning our loved ones when the going got tough, if at all.”
Through maternal dereliction of duty, this mother has made her children feel and treasure the value of a strongly bonded family.
If that is not enough reason to be grateful, then I would not know what is.
CONCLUSION
The strong tie that binds me to my seven siblings is borne of growing up in a motherless environment. We are bound by this common experience which forged our collective and individual strength, each with a can-do attitude, not fearful of facing life’s challenges.
We are also bound by gratitude to a woman to whom we owe our life, a mother who taught her eight children to be big on gratitude, especially to those who had wronged us the most.
