My mom always told me I was unforgiving and that I needed to learn to let things go. I always knew she was right, but it still seemed that just letting things go was not a reasonable or acceptable answer. There are a lot of crappy people out there doing unkind things to each other every day and I saw no reason why I was supposed to be okay with it.
Granted and hopefully in the majority, there are also relatively normal people just trying to get by who for whatever reason do something untoward that may not have been intended that way. I have a hard time distinguishing between these two scenarios emotionally. At the end of the day it still hurts.
Regardless of the intent or character of the offending individual, the end result is the same. Something someone else did has hurt or otherwise negatively affected me and it doesn't seem fair to say "no problem," and just move on as though nothing happened. I've always sort of operated under the assumption that people just shouldn't do mean things, damn it, and if they were going to suck then F 'em. Let them suck far away from me. (Never mind that I almost certainly do mean things to others without intending to. Or maybe I do intend to and choose to ignore this ugly truth about myself.)
This has obvious implications. It makes me a runner (someone who runs from problems) and probably a coward. It makes me a poor problem solver and probably even worse at communicating. And it just sucks because I'm handing my freedom over to anyone but myself and forcing myself to change who I am or the choices I make for lack of a better way to deal with things. But most of all it makes me so damn irritated all the time.
I've recognized this as a problem for a long time but I still haven’t come up with a workable solution. I needed a plan or at least a rule to follow when I encountered a situation in which I felt walked upon or hurt by someone I couldn’t reconcile with. I try to simply ignore stupid people and their ridiculous actions that directly affect me. I constantly try to remove myself emotionally from difficult people and situations. But I think the main problem is being able to wrap my feeble little mind around the idea that people have their own issues to deal with and I am probably the least of their concerns. (See previous post about assuming the world does not revolve around me.) Just because all signs point to malicious intent or absolute and total ignorance, it doesn't mean they woke up with the intent to be mean to me today. Or even if they did, maybe they think they have a good reason and either way what the Hell can I do about it? Or maybe they're spiteful and mean and if they tear you down then by God they are a better person in comparison.
Sigh..
It seems a hopeless battle. I refuse to forgive people for being so RIDICULOUS. On a REGULAR BASIS. It's not okay with me and I'm not going to tell them it's okay because it's not!!!
I get so. Angry. Every. Day.
It is apparent to me that I have already lost years off of my life just by being so angry with people all the time. And of course I'm not perfect and have no doubt hurt other people both intentionally and not. But hopefully most of the items in the intentional category have long since been written into history.
Finally this morning I finished reading a friend's post about accountability and one paragraph in particular struck me. Maybe I'm just looking at all of this the wrong way. Forgiveness doesn't mean it’s okay. It doesn’t mean what they did is acceptable. It doesn't mean I have to tell them I forgive them and that it's alright. It doesn’t mean I have to like them or even be friendly with them in the future. It makes no promises about what I do in the next few moments, days, weeks, or years. I’m not accepting the actions of someone else as justified or in some way deserved. I am in fact arming myself against the hurt and allowing myself to move on.
What a concept. I may actually be able to introduce this new word forgiveness into my vocabulary. And I’ll file it in the often used and positive implications section.
From The Poet's Live Journal Entry from December 13:
I mean, forgiveness is great – really all it means is finding peace with something that someone else has done so that you’re no longer hurting; it has nothing to do with the other person; that’s reconciliation and is a different essay entirely because it implies the complicity of both parties – but it does you absolutely no good if it just sets you up to get bulldozed again. Luckily most of the time people bulldoze other people because they are operating in two totally different and conflicting realities (mostly for very logical, although not always very productive, reasons), not because of any maliciousness or depravity. Sometimes it’s possible to align those realities (reconciliation), but other times – one or both parties don’t want to communicate, they don’t know how to communicate… and it’s just not possible. So what do you do? You forgive and you insulate yourself from whatever behavior the other exhibits which is out of context and hurtful in your reality, with full understanding (or as full as you can get) of why they operate the way they operate and how it really has nothing to do with you.
Thanks Lauren. I owe you another one.
