Forgiveness

There is not too much out there that is unforgivable, in my book.

Here’s the scenario. You are friends with Jim Bob. Jim Bob borrows fifty bucks. Jim Bob then spends the next two months avoiding you, so he doesn’t have to pay you back. You are pretty pissed at Jim Bob. Eventually you say, fuck that guy, I am going to cut him out of my life, and never speak to him again.

What happens next? Well, chances are, you are spending all your time thinking about Jim Bob, and Jim Bob is not spending any of his time thinking about you. You have a resentment against Jim Bob. You hate his guts. You hope bad things happen to him. You hope a piano falls on his head. And you go deeper and deeper in this resentment, and you know what they say about resentments—they are like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

The obvious solution here is forgiveness. But people don’t want to forgive, for a whole bunch of reasons. They might view it as a loss of face. They might view it as a show of weakness. It is not. It is actually a show of strength. And people miss the point of forgiveness entirely—it’s not for the benefit of the other person, it’s for the benefit of you. You forgive, so you can free yourself of the resentment, so you can go back to thinking about pastrami sandwiches, or whatever, instead of thinking about Jim Bob.

So this is a pretty lame example because fifty bucks is not really a big deal, and nobody ends relationships over that, right? You’d be surprised. But for the sake of argument, let’s use a really big example—Jim Bob sleeps with your wife. Are you supposed to forgive him then?

You might be surprised at the answer. A friend of a friend of a friend was living in Long Island, and his wife was out for a drive. A couple of miscreant kids take a cinder block and drop it off the overpass, right through the windshield of his wife’s car, killing her instantly. They never caught the kids. My friend told me that it was absolutely necessary to forgive those truants so that he could move on with his life. He had to do it—for himself.

Every once in a while, you’re watching the local news and they have some story about a murder or a vehicular homicide, and they’re interviewing the family of the victim, and they say on camera that they forgive the perpetrator for what he has done. And you’re like, what? Are you people nuts? How can you forgive someone for something like that? But those are some pretty smart people. They know what you don’t—that forgiveness is absolutely necessary to live a happy life.

The thing that is standing in the way of you and forgiveness is something known as righteous indignation. You know, sometimes you are right and the other person screwed you, and you have justified anger. Yes, the other person is undoubtedly an asshole. Yes, they shouldn’t have done what they did. You are right and they are wrong. Let go of it. People aren’t perfect. Sometimes I find myself in a situation where I piss someone off totally by accident, or out of carelessness. This happened to me recently—I pissed someone off, and I didn’t realize that I did it. When I finally realized it, I apologized profusely and made amends—and the person was still pissed. Well, that says more about him than it does about me. Wouldn’t you want people to show you the same decency that you would show them? Because, in not forgiving someone, what you’re saying is that I don’t make mistakes, I’m better, and this would never happen to me. But that isn’t true—we’re all human, and we all make mistakes.

You’re probably thinking that this all sounds well and good from an academic standpoint, but aren’t there situations in which Jim Bob is so toxic that you just don’t want to be around him? Where there has been a pattern of repeated bad behavior over time? Shouldn’t you try to extricate yourself from those relationships? Absolutely, yes. It is perfectly acceptable to remove yourself from a relationship—and forgive them at the same time. People get divorced, after all, over irreconcilable differences. Yet, I am always impressed when people have irreconcilable differences and divorce amicably, and still maintain a more distant relationship. Remember, the only examples of true unconditional love are the relationships we have with our pets. That’s why it’s so devastating when they pass away. People, on the other hand, are complicated. People can betray you—pets can’t. I don’t love my wife unconditionally—I really don’t. If she were to betray my trust, that would be the end of the relationship. I wouldn’t love her anymore.

But I would still forgive her—for my own sake, not hers.

Sometimes Jim Bob wrongs us and we think Jim Bob is a bad person. Probably not. Jim Bob isn’t a bad person, more often than not, he is a sick person, and we don’t like his symptoms. Perhaps Jim Bob has some hangup about money because his father filed for bankruptcy when he was a kid, and now he goes around stiffing people out of fifty bucks. It’s not Jim Bob’s fault. And crucially, you’re not going to change Jim Bob. Jim Bob is who he is. You have two choices: you can put him in the penalty box, or you can accept him for who he is, and have a relationship with a person who is deeply flawed. News flash: we all are. That’s not to say that there aren’t some truly bad people out there, but they are few and far between. I only know one.

When I find that I have a resentment against someone for some thing or another, what usually helps is for me to wish that good things happen to this person. I wish they get money. I wish they get fame. Beyond the cash and prizes, I wish that they have deep, meaningful relationships, and are truly happy, and that they get everything that I would want for myself. Do this every day for two weeks, if you can stomach it, and that resentment will go away after a while, I assure you. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I set out to do this, and it ends up as “fuck that guy, he can go to hell.” I’m just not ready yet. You’re allowed to be angry—for a short period of time. If you find that you’re angry about anything for longer than 48 hours, you have a problem. We’re not saints. We get mad about stuff. But if I’m angry for longer than 48 hours, that anger has turned into a resentment, and that resentment is poisoning my life.

You have to let go.

An entire book could be written about letting go. Letting go of your fears, letting go of your resentments. But fear and resentment, especially self-justified anger, feels good when you’re in the midst of it. It gives your brain something to do, right? I mean, what would life be if we weren’t obsessing about something all the time? Fear and resentment are obsessive—we get on the hamster wheel in our brain and we can’t get off. I’m not a resentment guy, I’m a fear guy. And when I’m stuck on a fear, it’s awful—it’s the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. And the thing about fears and resentments is that they can kill. People commit suicide over this stuff. People commit homicide over this stuff. People dive headlong into addictive behavior over this stuff, to escape, temporarily.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean the other person “wins.” You don’t win by proving your superiority—you win by surrendering. You surrender to win.

A few years ago, I got sideways with a very good friend of mine on social media. Note: social media is how 90% of resentments start. Especially late at night. I was convinced I was right. He was convinced he was right. We were at a poop stalemate. This continued for about two years, at which point I surrendered, called him up, and apologized for my part in it—because I did have a part in it. He was so taken aback, that he quickly apologized as well. And now the friendship is stronger than ever. And trust me, this consumed me for a while, in much of the same way that all resentments do—he’s the asshole, it’s his fault, etc. And now I am free of the resentment. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until I started writing this essay.

Pride alone stands in the way. Drop the rock, and know a new happiness.