Category Archives: forgiveness

Forgiveness (the Grudge, Part II)

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I bear no bitterness. This caught me by surprise as I laid in bed next to my husband, with child and with two cats who were purring in contentment. I found my spirit light and without any of the rancor which shaded my life for so long. It was a shadow I’d grown accustomed to, and presumed it would always be there, just less pronounced on the bright days. No, it was gone.

Did I really, finally find it within myself to forgive?

Loosing this grudge felt strikingly similar to absent-mindedly dropping something on the sidewalk. You move on, if for no other reason than ignorance of the loss. I explored this feeling for a few moments. Was it forgiveness, or was it indifference inspired by irrelevance?

I laid there and asked myself for what I was forgiving the now-former target of my bitterness. A list of trespasses passed through my mind, stinging as I experienced the memory. It stung, but that was it. What was enmity was replaced with sadness and resignation.  Bitterness had transfigured into acceptance.

—-

This bitterness had a quality of terror to it. A year after we stopped speaking, I saw someone on the streets, literally, with a strong resemblance to the begrudged. Same facial features, torn jeans, but dreadlocks. My heart-rate jumped, my hands became shaky, and I wanted to run away. I was with family, and it was embarrassing. The person in torn jeans asked me if they could have our leftover pho, which we were carrying back to my apartment.  My body reacted similarly when Google + recommended that begrudged and I connect. I gritted my teeth and cursed at the computer. I dreaded the idea of running into this person in person with a fear unpersuaded by its unlikelihood.

I think the target of my bitterness is ignorant of my loathing for them, and probably unaware of how much they hurt me. There was no falling out or dramatic end. I simply stopped talking to this person, quietly blocked them on facebook, and said little about it. Never heard from them again; it has been years since I have seen, spoken, or written to this person. We do not share any mutual friends. We reside on opposite sides of the country. It appears that we live in distinct phases of life. To even write “we” feels as though it were a violation of the truth. There is no “we”. There never will be a “we”, especially as the silence between us promises to remain a permanent state of being. For many reasons that is the best outcome for all involved.

This person was like a co-conspirator to enter the dark side with: they who drew and gave a map of the woods, became a companion for wandering the paths, and subsequently abandoned me when the trouble came. It is that last part which inspired my grudge. I lashed back at this person, offended by the unfairness of being alone to tidy up. They found something new and shiny and moved on with their life. I felt thrown away.

The non-metaphorical description of that time is that I hurt people and did destructive things. Despite this, my loved ones forgave me and surrounded me with love and support. This was my first time really screwing up. I was the good kid, I always did everything “right”. Now I had first hand experience with failure and humility. I  knew that my love ones really do love me unconditionally, as the conditions were tested. I saw the world and my relationships through a new lens. I am grateful for those lessons. Over time I absorbed them, and they became part of me.

Eventually I would see that abandonment was the best possible outcome, and feel grateful instead of bitter.

—-

Forgiveness may have been on the horizon for awhile. I remember thinking, early in the process, that some forms of moving on would simply require enough life to pass that the relevance to expire. Time would heal some wounds; scars are part of the body. My life had changed so much in the years since. There was the cross country move, my episode of veganism, abandoning a PhD, and getting pregnant. My mindset changed too. I found greater peace.

The signs of imminent forgiveness came as bits of compassion for this person. One involved a friend telling a story about this person’s relative. The speaker struggled with her. The begrudged struggled with her too. I thought to myself, “That must have been tough for them.” There was a “This American Life” episode which described something that they experienced, and again I felt this fleeting empathy for them.  Even in small doses, compassion makes it hard to hate.

Slowly, I unclenched my grip on the grudge. It was gradual that I did not even feel my hands relaxing.

—

It is over, and restoration has a present quality to it. I have no intention of unblocking. There is no reason to seek them out. I lack the desire to reach out as much as I am currently without hatred towards them. It ended, why would I pick up a pen to write a new chapter? To tell them about an animosity which they did not know existed? I do not want to catch up, and I am not curious about their life or goals. I stopped hating them. In an imperfect world and as an imperfect person, that is good enough. “We” are reconciled that way.

—-

Three days ago, I was in the checkout line at Whole Foods, purchasing some canned tomatoes which were on sale. I unloaded the basket onto the belt, and looked up at the cashier. [Name]? I thought to myself, surprised. What a striking resemblance. The cashier had the same eyes, same facial structure, same posture, same style of ill-fitting clothes, the same dark hair and spacy look. The name tag had someone else’s name on it. It was a different person. I smiled and made small talk. They gave me a double bag discount. With my heart rate low, I packed my backpack with the tomatoes, wished the cashier a good day, and left for the bus.

I walked slowly, as I am with child, but not too slowly, because I was eager to get home to have dinner with my husband.

The Grudge, Part II

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All grudges are the same.

This occurred to me when I realized that my life reads like a novel, with parallel story lines, symbolism and foreshadowing. Stories seem to repeat themselves around me. Granted, human experiences are not that diverse. We often make the same mistakes and have the same successes. Similar things bring joys and sorrows; we truly are in an interdependent web. I find myself lost when the plot of my life goes onto new territory. A grudge was not new territory, if the story surrounding its inception was.

I can write about grudges in vague terms because while the origin of one is kind of a crazy, ugly story, and the origin of another a trite and banal one, the broader elements are the same. I am writing about a particular situation, but this grudge was just like all the other ones I have had.

Awhile ago, I was corresponding with a former acquaintance via email. He was describing some bad blood he had with a close family member. This was someone who repeatedly had tried to reach out to him, but he always pushed them away. He was hurt and angry with this person for a lot of reasons, and could not, did not want to, or even saw the use in forgiving them. It seemed like it was really eating away at him, and having a harmful effect on his life in other ways. I argued that he should just let it go.

I wrote, among other things,

“[Person], hate will eat you alive. It might take awhile, but it will devour you. I’m not trying to say that your feelings aren’t valid – they are. Or that you don’t have a right to them - you do. It’s just that it strikes me, on a human condition level, that letting go of one’s hate is best for their sanity and well being. It’s draining, you know?“

He replied,

 ”Maybe, maybe  not. If it’s the case, I hope hate likes condiments.“

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. (I probed for the meaning, because I felt his phrasing was confusing. Essentially, he was arguing that if hate will eat him alive, then he would rather facilitate this than let the grudge go.)

His active resistance stunned me. On some levels, I should not have been so surprised: it is foolish to presume a world view that makes so much sense to me would be shared by others. Particularly considering that his view of the world was notoriously different than mine, and his ways of being and functioning in it were also quite dissimilar to me. The same could be said for anyone else: we are coming from different places. Even so, I remember feeling shocked that someone could, and would even want to, continue to hold onto something that was (so obviously, it seemed) causing them harm.

In my mind’s eye, he was tightly clutching ninja-stars, the sharp edges continually and deeply cutting into his hands. The defense he had developed in response to the initial wound was injuring him further. Dropping them, it seemed, would be the only way to allow healing to start. He did not see it this way. This was a part of him, the pain was a part of him. Why let that go?

Cue the irony…

He would become the person that I begrudged. In the interest of repeating story lines, we, like he and his family member, are not speaking. Perhaps the silence is for the best with his family. It certainly was, and is, for me. I suspect it is for him.

All grudges are the same. They involve expectations unmet. Maybe the expectation was help, trust, non-harming, showing up to a birthday party, recognition, keeping your city/product safe, not hurting a loved one or keeping in contact with your mother. The details do not matter for this discussion. I had an expectation. Several, in fact. The important ones were unmet.

I felt so justified in my anger. Maybe I was. Maybe I was not. A grudge’s existence is not necessarily based on any objective reality, just the emotional logic of the bearer. I do not think that any justification or lack thereof matters much these days. It is not my reasoning which is on trial here. The point is that my bitterness did not alter anything about the grudge’s origin. My indignation will not change the past. 


“Hate is drinking poison, expecting the other person to die.”

There I was, clenching the ninja-stars in my fists, feeling them cutting into my flesh, but afraid to let go. It felt like this grudge was protecting me somehow, like I thought these weapons that were doing me quite a bit of harm were necessary for my safety. Protecting me from going back, protecting me from inviting further harm from these unmet expectations and the harm done to my loved ones. Meanwhile, this grudge was devouring me and digesting me ever so slowly. I cannot say I did not know better: I had given the advice I was struggling so much to take!

A book I read suggested that if you cannot forgive a person, or let go of a grudge, then release them and it to God. Thanks, self-help book. Now I need to go find God. I settled on my faith instead, and sought out some wisdom. Rev. Nate Walker refers to clutching an “ever fashionable grudge bag” in his argument of Unitarian Universalism’s need to be a saving faith through an innovative morality. OK. Lynn Cox refers to forgiveness as “The Final Form of Love”. If you are bitter, you are not really interested in love, but she makes some good points -

“Forgiveness does not mean allowing a harmful situation to continue. Forgiveness does not mean pretending that an act caused less harm than it actually did. Forgiveness does not mean continuing a relationship as if a harmful incident never happened. Relationships continue, but they are changed in the process of hurting and healing.”

In my case, the relationship “change” became “termination”. Rev. Cox goes on to argue that’s not the way to go. That throwing someone back to the universe means I am denying their humanity. Um, no. I can owe up to our human commonalities, which there were many, including my heavy contribution to fault, and decide that coexisting in the world without contact is the best for everyone. I can apologize (as I did), I can forgive (as I have been trying) and still need to keep my distance if that is what is best for me and my family. So when Rev. Kirk Loadman-Copeland argued that,  ”Forgiveness need not result in reconciliation in which the relationship is restored,” I nodded my head.

Rev. Loadman-Copeland paraphrases Marilynne Robinson’s quote that understanding is a form of forgiveness. This makes sense, considering so many things are the result of misunderstanding. I was in a place where I knew this person well enough to get it – to give him very charitable interpretations of his actions, and I was privy to a lot of his pain. We were close. So, I can say that everything makes sense. Understanding made it more painful. Understanding does not undo the damage done.

It took me awhile to realize that the “making sense” on the path to forgiveness was a reliance on logic. Forgiveness is not a rational act. It is something you do for your health, your sanity, for the sake of the world, not because you “should” or are obligated to.

Slowly, my grip on my ninja-star-like grudge relaxed. I had help. My husband is a saint. My friends and family are loving, understanding, grace-giving people. Will and I moved to Seattle. We acquired new, more pressing problems, ever-more unrelated to this one as time passed. We learned to cope with them. We acquired new friends, new experiences, and dare I say it? New frustrations and new ways of being wronged. Fortunately, these are easier ones to forgive. Some problems got solved. Others felt more tolerable. Time went on, and it became clear that life does too. My heart began to acknowledge what my mind already knew: my white-knuckle grip on the past bleeds on my otherwise fine present. Being present became easier. I am starting to find my old self again, the one who is spiritually unencumbered and the one that feels effective and happy.

There is another piece to this, too big to fully describe here: self-forgiveness. I have a lot of culpability, and thinking of my contributions to it is painful. I described this to a Christian writer that I admire, who replied with, “Don’t you know that you have been forgiven?” She was referring to the grace of Jesus Christ. She could have been talking about the people in my life. My husband, friends, family, and so forth. Like usual, they are better people than me. My inability to forgive myself for my role has served as extra knots in rope tying this grudge against the other to me. The struggle to extend that human compassion to this other person has also been a fight to give some to myself, and my own high standards. I wonder if this is a piece of all grudges, a piece of self-blame towards one self for a failure to prevent or foresee an event, or simply wishing they had behaved better in face of it. Letting anger against the other go means that I have to cope with the anger I have towards myself.

I am a work in progress. Part of the progress is dropping the grudge, forgiving those who wrong me, and moving on in the world. Life tests you before it teaches you, and even when you knew better sometimes you still learn the hard way.

And so I learned the lesson of how heavy the weight of carrying a grudge really is, even though I already knew it.