Buried in the Ground, Not the Back

Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. For those of you listening for the first time, thank you for joining me today. I hope you find something useful to take away from this episode. For my returning listeners, it’s good to have you here again with me. What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fight with someone? Did you make up, or resolve the conflict?

We’re going to change things up in this episode by getting into today’s phrase right off the bat. The phrase is: to have an axe to grind.

This expression has nothing to do with actually grinding an axe, even though that is where the image comes from. To grind an axe, in the literal sense, means to sharpen its blade. In English, when we say someone has an axe to grind, we mean they are carrying a personal grievance, meaning a feeling of being wronged, that motivates them in ways other people might not see. They have something to settle. They have a grudge. A grudge is a feeling of resentment that you hold against someone, often for a long time, because of something they did to you, or something you believe they did to you. Grudges can last for days, for years, or in some cases for generations.

To have an axe to grind suggests that someone is not approaching a situation neutrally. They are bringing something personal with them. When a coworker constantly criticizes someone in meetings, you might say, “He clearly has an axe to grind.” It is usually said with a slight sense of suspicion. The person might claim they are being fair, but you know they are not, because you can see the grudge underneath.

Here’s a quick example: my brother brought up that argument from five years ago at the dinner table. I think he has an axe to grind.

Keep that expression in mind. We’ll come back to it before we’re done.

Both my wife and I had a surprisingly laid-back day today. Not much on the schedule for work. No community events. No plans with friends. A day like this might have shaped up to be a day for adventure if both of us were feeling our best, but in our current condition, neither one of us was up for much excitement. So instead, we spent the day watching a couple of shows together.

One of the shows we watched today was an old favorite of ours. It’s a show called Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is technically an animated children’s show, but it contains a serious amount of compelling characters, comedic writing, and complex themes. It transcends age barriers, so people both young and old can connect with it.

Avatar is about a boy destined to save the world. Shortly after learning of his destiny, the boy, named Aang, tries to run away. He gets caught in a storm and, through some magical shenanigans, is frozen inside an iceberg for 100 years. When he is eventually revived, he wakes up to a world on the edge of destruction. It’s his job to restore balance and save the world, but he is young and inexperienced. It’s a show that explores some pretty heavy themes about identity, responsibility, and the consequences of war. If you’re interested in watching a new show in English, give it a chance.

One of the episodes we watched today is called “The Great Divide.” It tells the story of two clans, the Gan Jin and the Zhang, who have been feuding for 100 years. The two clans have wildly different personalities. The Gan Jin are clean, organized, and a little bit snobby. The Zhang are rough, casual, and proud of it. They could not be more different if they tried.

Because of the effects of a widespread war, both clans have been displaced, meaning forced to leave their homes, and they are now refugees seeking sanctuary in a far-off city called Ba Sing Se. To get there, they need to cross the largest canyon in the world. It’s a day-long trek with a guide who will lead them down into the canyon, across its floor, and back up the other side. To make the journey successfully, the two clans need to cooperate. But both clans have an axe to grind.

Their unwillingness to work together puts them in hot water, which is to say it puts them in a very bad situation. The guide gets severely injured early in the trip and can no longer help them. As they navigate the canyon on their own, both sides tell their version of why the feud started. The Gan Jin say one of their ancestors was attacked and robbed by a member of the Zhang clan, who stole a sacred orb during an important ritual. The Zhang say their ancestor was innocent and was wrongfully accused. Each version makes the other clan look like villains.

When the situation reaches its most desperate point and it looks like the two clans might actually kill each other, Aang, the main character, steps in. He tells them that he was actually alive 100 years ago, which in the show is true, and that he personally knew the two men the legend is about. He explains that there was no robbery and no sacred ritual. The two men were just twin brothers, eight years old, playing a ball game. The orb was a ball. The eastern and western gates from the legend were goalposts. The whole hundred-year feud was based on a children’s game that two clans had misremembered into a tragedy.

The clans, embarrassed but ready for the feud to end, agree to set their differences aside. They work together to climb out of the canyon and continue on to Ba Sing Se with a new spirit of cooperation. It’s only after they leave that Aang admits to his friends that he made the whole story up. He had no idea what really happened. But he knew the feud had gone on long enough, and that sometimes the only way to end a fight is to give people a new story to tell.

While watching this episode, I was reminded of a real-life clan feud that lasted more than 100 years. The feud was between the Hatfields and the McCoys, and it is one of the most famous family rivalries in American history. When the credits began to roll, I turned to my wife and asked her if she remembered learning about the Hatfields and McCoys in her school history classes. To my shock, she did not.

Emma typically has a much better memory for school-related things than I do because she was, and still is, a much better student than I am. It is not often that I get to teach her something. So I jumped at the chance. And I’d like to share the story with you too.

The Hatfields and the McCoys were two large families who lived on opposite sides of the Tug Fork River, which forms part of the border between the American states of West Virginia and Kentucky. The Hatfields lived on the West Virginia side. The McCoys lived on the Kentucky side.

The feud began around 1878 because of a pig. The McCoys accused the Hatfields of stealing one of their hogs. In a rural farming community, a hog represented food, money, and survival. They went to court, and the judge, who happened to be related to the Hatfields, ruled in their favor. The McCoys lost the trial, lost the hog, and lost their trust in their neighbors.

Then came a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque love story. In 1880, an eighteen-year-old Johnse Hatfield fell for twenty-one-year-old Roseanna McCoy despite their families’ disapproval. They began living together in the Hatfield home, and the McCoys were furious. They came to retrieve her, and she returned, but she was already pregnant. Johnse ended up marrying Roseanna’s cousin a few months later, while Roseanna and their daughter tragically died shortly after childbirth.

The feud reached its peak in 1882, when three McCoy boys killed one of the Hatfield brothers in a violent fight. In retaliation, the Hatfields kidnapped the three McCoy brothers and executed them. From that point on, there was no possibility of reconciliation. The most infamous moment came on New Year’s Day in 1888, when a group of Hatfields attacked the McCoy home in the middle of the night, set it on fire, and killed two children as they tried to escape. The story made national news. Both families became symbols of unresolvable American conflict, and the phrase “the Hatfields and McCoys” is still used today to describe any two groups locked in a fight whose origins no one really remembers.

By the early 1890s, the worst of the violence had ended, but the families never officially made peace. For more than a century, the feud existed in a strange state of limbo, meaning without a final conclusion. And then, on June 14, 2003, the descendants of both families came together and signed an official truce, formally ending the feud more than 120 years after the pig trial.

Which brings me to today’s second expression: to bury the hatchet.

A hatchet is a small axe used as a tool and, historically, as a weapon. To bury the hatchet, taken literally, means to put the weapon into the ground so that nobody can use it. As an expression in English, it means to make peace with someone after a long conflict. To formally set down the fight and walk away from it.

The expression has a real historical origin. Many Native American peoples, particularly members of the Iroquois Confederacy in what is now the northeastern United States, had a ceremonial practice of literally burying weapons in the ground when peace was made between warring groups. The phrase entered English from those traditions in the seventeenth century and has been part of the language ever since.

What I love about the image is how physical it is. You are not just agreeing to stop fighting in your mind. You are taking the weapon, the actual thing you could use to hurt someone, and putting it in the ground. You are burying your weapon of war in a commitment to peace.

Now, think about how this expression pairs with today’s warm-up. To have an axe to grind is to carry a weapon around, sharpening it and keeping it ready. To bury the hatchet is to take that weapon and put it in the ground. The same object. Two opposite choices.

The Gan Jin and the Zhang in the Avatar episode buried the hatchet, even though it took an outsider deceiving them to make it happen. The Hatfields and the McCoys took 120 years to bury theirs. Either way, the choice was the same.

Stop sharpening. Start digging.

That is what burying the hatchet looks like when it really happens. Choosing, intentionally, that the fight ends here.

So here’s something to think about. Do you have an axe you’ve been quietly grinding? A small grudge, an old argument, a story about someone who wronged you that you still tell yourself sometimes? You don’t have to forgive anything you’re not ready to forgive. But it might be worth asking whether carrying the axe is helping you, or just making the journey heavier.

Have you ever buried the hatchet with someone, or are you still grinding the axe? I genuinely hope it’s the former. But if it’s the latter, I hope something in today’s episode gives you a little nudge toward a shovel.

And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.