Bitter

It is not a nice word I have been looking up, but I have seen things in a new light.  The word is “bitter”.  It is known that a lemon is bitter, but the aspect of the word I have been looking at is how a person is bitter.
I was wondering how it happens.  What stands out to me is the unwillingness to be vulnerable.  There is no doubt in my mind bad things happen and there are injustices perpetrated.  Yet to me I always have a choice.  They say, and it is cliché, that the difference between bitter and better is I.
It seems sad to me, but it happens too regularly, hurt leads to a closing of the personality.  The way to cope is seen to be to shut the door and never open it again.  A common denominator is a generalization.  A person is hurt by one, and so all are seen as bad.
To me this is sad on a number of levels.  For a start it is just plain wrong.  For me one experience does not mean what was experienced is always the case.  It is not that one size fits all.  I remember buying a product and it was terrible.  I tried the same product some months later and found it was really good.
The other reason I have a problem with bitterness is that it prevents my growth.  I would like to be a whole person.  Sometimes that means letting go.  I do not deny the hurt or disappointment, but I refuse to stop at that point.   
Maybe my experience was bad, but it does not mean all of life needs to be bad.  There is so much good I could potentially miss.  As I am fond of saying “what I concentrate on grows bigger.”  If I concentrate on the hurt and disappointment it is sure to dominate my thinking which can lead to bitterness.  If on the other hand I concentrate on the good that comes my way, the hurt is guaranteed to assume its rightful proportions.
Maybe that is easier said than done, but personally I work with workable chunks.  In one hit it can be too big.  Broken down it is manageable, and I try to fill the void with good things that tend to self-perpetuate.