When you hold a grudge, you want someone else’s sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.

Maraboli frames grudges as a kind of emotional accounting: the injured person unconsciously seeks an equivalent “payment” in the other’s suffering. The line suggests that resentment is sustained by the hope that the offender will feel pain proportionate to one’s own, yet reality rarely supplies that symmetry—others may be oblivious, unrepentant, or simply incapable of matching the depth of the hurt. The mismatch keeps the grudge alive while offering little relief, implying that forgiveness or letting go is less about excusing harm than about refusing to tether one’s well-being to another person’s emotional response.