Resentment is often characterized as one drinking poison but hoping the other person dies. It’s most foolish and an exercise in futility where the most harm is inflicted on the person holding the resentment. Any logical personwill tell you to just say it out loud to the person you are resentful about and try to resolve it and if it can’t be resolved, then just move on.

But what if the resentment is legitimate? Or worse, what if the resentment is the kind you can’t say out loud, because if you do, it will upset the natural order of things.

When I was 16 years old and on summer vacation, I saw a documentary on PBS called ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ by acclaimed documentary filmmaker David Sutherland. I don’t know how at 16 I was able to sit through 6 hours of a documentary film about a rural Nebraskan couple who…