Start by marveling at the bizarre fact that simply being born in a certain place automatically signs you up to a lifetime membership in a club whose primary activity is holding grudges—especially those you didn’t sign up for and can’t cancel. It’s like waking up in the middle of a centuries-long feud, having missed the opening insults, yet expected to passionately take a side.
Dive into the absurdity of how historical resentments, no matter how ancient or dusty, stubbornly linger, as if bitterness was a local specialty—like cheese and wine, only less enjoyable. These grudges, handed down with solemn duty, force you into a performance of collective irritation, no matter how little you actually care about whoever offended your ancestors centuries ago. Ancestors who, it just so happens, probably have far less in common with you than your alleged nemeses do—and let’s face it, you probably wouldn’t spend eight hours enthusiastically jigging to the scratchy wails of a broken violin while earnestly debating the finer points of eternal salvation.
Acknowledge the uncomfortable truth: location-based resentment is merely tribalism dressed in historical nostalgia, an exhausting cycle of resentment masquerading as heritage. It’s the kind of baggage airlines would gleefully charge extra for, yet we’re compelled to lug around for free—lest we be branded traitors or, worse, a good little colonized.
Propose, with wry conviction, that maybe—just maybe—it’s possible to simply refuse the inheritance. Imagine the radical possibility of shrugging off collective bitterness as if it’s an itchy sweater handed down by an overbearing relative—charmingly sentimental, perhaps, but ultimately unbearable.
End by suggesting, lightly but pointedly, that grudges don’t age well. Like any tradition that refuses to evolve, they grow stale, embarrassing, and faintly ridiculous. Perhaps it’s finally time to opt out of the ancestral grudge club—because frankly, membership is overrated and the meetings are always exhausting.
History, for all its blood and drama, is mostly a long parade of things that no longer exist. Civilizations crumble, empires dissolve, and yet the grudges somehow linger like mold in the corners of human consciousness. I pity the poor Lombard who spent his brief, plague-prone existence seething over Roman domination—just as I pity the post-Byzantine Greek nursing a centuries-old grudge against Constantinople’s fall, or the Carthaginian romanticizing Hannibal’s elephants while loathing the memory of Rome. They were all just people, like us, stuck with one short life and a choice: cling to the ashes, or go outside and feel the sun.