Exactly! Yes! I am not happy that, for example, my old boss just prances along in his perfect little life, oblivious to the fact that what he did to me in 2001 was illegal, unethical, and amoral. I could use other words, but this is a family site. I am still angry at my ex-wife for an abundance of things: we got divorced in 2008. And I am angry at my most recent partner of ten years because she stole an absolutely ungodly sum of money from me and repeatedly cheated.

The problem is, being in that place of anger and I-am-going-to-make-you-pay actually doesn't make me feel good. It feels terrible, to me. As a guy with a massive mental illness history and years (yes, years) spent in the hospital, my goal is peace. I would like to be in peace as much of the time as possible. So, how to do that?

Well, I was actually practicing this last night. Understand that, while I have taken CBT and DBT and REBT and Shame Resilience (Brenee Brown) and studied Buddhism and I could go on, I am no guru. I am just a patient like the rest of us. So anyway, here's what I did.I pictured my old boss. I thought about what he did. And then I said to myself, 'I accept that Neil S. discriminated against me and mistreated me. I accept that he broke the law. That he was mean to me and took advantage of me financially. I accept that all these things happened because they did.'

So I said that. And I sat with it. And breathed. I like breathing. Then, I said: 'To want revenge against Neil is to deny reality. Because all these things did happen. They already happened. It's over. Getting revenge won't change that. Nothing can. What I need to do is accept what happened. More breathing.

Then, I said to myself: I accept that Neil mistreated me. I accept that that, in fact, occurred.

And then, I suddenly felt much, much better.

I did this little thing with a number of the items on my gripe list and I felt better every single time. For me, acceptance is the answer to all my revenge fantasies. It makes me feel good. I don't have to worry about all these people anymore. I can just take care of me.

No idea if any of this will resonate. Your goals in life may be different than mine. As I said, my major goal is peace. So, everything I do is with that in mind. At the end of the day, nothing I do now is ever going to change the way these people live their lives. They have their own thing going. I just need to focus on me. I need to take care of me. That's more than enough to do.