Skip to main content

Crow Behavior

Read this interesting article about crows holding on to grudges for a long time and making it an intergenerational  - much like humans. Though with humans sometimes the source of the grudge is sometimes replaced by the default behavior of one who holds a grudge. If the grudge holder were asked specific reasons why they are resentful, they may no longer be able to recall. And even if they did, they would realize it made no sense anymore. Those events from long ago might have been relevant to who they were as a person back then but time has changed them at the the one they resent so much that it is now illogical and bizarre even. 

Yet that is not how humans always think. For crows seems there is a time limit for grudge-holding  - they can remember people they perceive as threats for as long as 17 years. This long-term memory enables them to react aggressively towards these individuals even after many years have passed since the initial encounter. I have a few folks in my life who have felt resentful at me for much longer than that. My efforts to reset have never worked because as more time passed and more we drifted apart, the last time we actually knew each other had receded to a past so remote that neither of us recalled that time in our lives anymore; there was nothing to return to. Like crows, these folks have socialized their grudges along - frequently to spouses and children who have no baseline of me as a person and all they know is there is an unresolved grudge. They do what is logical for people in such situations to do - they avoid what could potentially be problematic. I am myself guilty of such avoidance behavior - I do not want to confront this person about what they did to make me so upset so my strategy is to completely avoid them.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more