Near the very end of The Stress of Life, the book that had so moved me as a high school student, Selye thinks carefully about two mutually exclusive responses to stress in human relations: revenge and gratitude. Revenge, he notes, is an attempt to relieve stress. It is a very human response to a threat to one’s security. But revenge, he observes, “has no virtue whatever, and can only hurt both the giver and the receiver of its fruits.” Revenge brings only more revenge, in an endless cycle. If the goal is to relieve stress in a way that enhances one’s life, rather than detracts from it, there
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