Ben Affleck's Wise Words about Grudge-Holding and Success in his 2013 Oscars Speech

The only moment from the 2013 Oscars which held any kind of truth and beauty in it for me was Ben Affleck's Oscar Speech:   *SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Great words, great delivery…and in spite of complaining about his marriage to a room full of one billion people, a great guy, too.  But how the hell should I know?  I'm not Jennifer Garner.

Let's get back to the speech -- It contained many truths worth noting and meditating on…Such as advice that one does not succeed if they hold grudges.  Okay --- Well, from the get-go I can tell you that this is a biggie.  I mean, not holding grudges is hard.  

I'm not sure why he felt he needed to share this with us, and I'm fairly certain that someone, somewhere knows precisely why Affleck did include it, but we can all learn from his emotion-soaked reminder that that grudges probably aren't the best way to forge a successful business plan in life.  Always better to hear this from a guy holding an Oscar than from a bum, I suppose.

Now I, for one, find revenge to be rich motivation for success, but perhaps that's actually a bit different than grudge-holding. I will say this though --  I love that this truth was a centerpiece in an Oscar acceptance speech.  So, I plan to ruminate on his wisdom for quite some time.  

In fact I'm going to suggest that many of us mull that concept over and over in our brains in an attempt to purge any inner Don Corleones and Tony Sopranos raging inside us.  

Ben clearly had the best speech of the night.  And I found it mighty refreshing to hear someone speak with refreshing candor at the podium about the tough realities of both marriage and working in Hollywood.

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So according to Ben Affleck, when I feel like this:

--- Or this  ---

What we should really do is --

Just let it all go.

Hollywood's just too small a town for grudges.

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF BEN AFFLECK'S 2013 OSCAR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:

"Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. I know eventually that thing is going to start quickly so please forgive me if this is a little bit quick. I want to acknowledge Steven Spielberg, who I feel is a genius and a towering talent among us. I want to acknowledge the other 8 films, there are 8 great films, who have as much a right to be up here as we do. I want to acknowledge them for what they did and thank them and many of them who didn't even get nominated this year.

I want to thank Jack McNiece, Jerry Speck, Marty Brest and my brother and my mom and dad and Patrick Whitesell and Tony Mendez, who let us do his story. Thank you. I thank you everyone in the movie, on the movie, worked on the movie, did anything with this movie gets thanked. I want to thank Canada. I want to thank our friends in Iran living in terrible circumstances right now.

I want to thank my wife who I don't usually associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It's good. It is work but it's the best kind of work and there's no one I'd rather work. And I'd just like to say, I was here 15 years ago or something and I had no idea what I was doing. I stood out here in front of you all and really just a kid. I went out and I never thought I would be back here. And I am, because of so many of you who are here tonight, because of this Academy, because of so many wonderful people who extended themselves to me when they had nothing to benefit from it in Hollywood. You know what I mean, I couldn't get them a job.

I want to thank them and I want to thank what they taught me, which is that you have to work harder than you think you possibly can. You can't hold grudges. It's hard but you can't hold grudges. And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life because that's going to happen. All that matters is you gotta get up. Violet, Sam and Sera, this is for you."