“In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry.” (Page 64, Big Book)
Most people think that the resentment inventory is a historical exercise: a history of resentments.
Let’s look at the tenses.
He is describing what they did in the past:
‘We set them on paper.’
When he was doing this, he would have said, ‘We are setting this on paper.’
The simple past describes what would have been described in the present, in that past time.
Similarly, ‘We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry,’ is a present description of a past act. That past act, described in the present, becomes: ‘We are listing people, institutions or principles with whom we are angry. We are asking ourselves why we are angry.’
This is therefore to do with the present, not the past.
If it concerned the past, it would read:
‘We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we had been angry. We asked ourselves why we had been angry.’
The resentment inventory is thus an inventory of present resentments, not past resentments.
This is not about dragging up, resuscitating, resurrecting, or rekindling. If you can’t remember it, good.
The past is relevant only in as far as it is CURRENTLY eating one’s lunch, as it were. If one is currently angry about a past event, fine. To this extent, and to this extent only, does the line about going ‘back though one’s life’ apply.
But most people are currently angry about current or very recent things.
This is also not the moral inventory, proper, it is part of the preparation, in which a sample of resentments are statistically taken to understand their futility and fatality, in order, in turn, to get rid of them, in order, in turn, to be able to write good actual inventory on ourselves.
This is not psychotherapeutic delving or the writing of a life story.