Forgiveness As A Selfish Act
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A couple years ago I found out that a few people I worked with were saying unflattering things about me behind my back.
I suppose the things they were saying weren’t really so bad, but their comments were something I expected from kids in high school, not professionals in their late 20’s and early 30’s.
They made fun of how I took the job too seriously. How ridiculous they thought I looked when something went wrong at work. How much they enjoyed watching me struggle when my job put me in difficult situations. Above all, they made nasty comments about the person I was.
Besides the obvious sting of finding out about these comments, the worst part was that they made me feel like there was something wrong with me as a human being.
Even so, these things probably shouldn’t have bothered me as much as they did, but it was a very small company and I worked closely with these people for a number of years. I knew we weren’t best friends, but I thought they respected me for working hard, taking the job seriously, and being a decent person.
It hurt to find out that wasn’t the case and the more I thought about what happened, the angrier it made me.
When I cooled down, I thought about confronting these people to clear the air. But, about a year later, I left that job without bringing it up to any of them. I didn’t think it would be productive and I knew that if they were immature enough to say those things about me in the first place, they were almost certainly too immature to apologize or have a constructive conversation if I brought it up.
I wish I could say I put that situation behind me when I left that job. That I let it go and moved on with my life. But the truth is, it stuck with me for far too long. I carried the hurt around with me everywhere I went.
And for a long time, the idea of forgiving those people seemed insane to me. I didn’t think I needed to forgive them. I thought it was fine to stay mad at them.
So I did that for a while. Way longer than I should have. And as you might imagine, nothing good came from holding that grudge. Nothing good came from resenting those people for what they said about me.
In my stubbornness, I thought that forgiving them made me weak. I thought that forgiving them meant I was okay with what they did. I thought that my forgiveness wasn’t something they deserved.
I only viewed forgiveness in terms of what it gave them, while I completely ignored what it gave me.
A few years removed from that situation, I now understand that my refusal to forgive held me back more than anything else. It stunted me as a person and it prevented me from getting on with my life.
After wrestling with these complicated thoughts and feelings for a long time, I forgave those people I used to work with.
But I didn’t reach out to tell them.
Besides the fact that they never knew I had found out in the first place, forgiving those people was more about me than it was about them.
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately
About how necessary it is. About how all of us will find ourselves in situations where we have the opportunity to forgive other people. And I think that forgiveness can be one of the toughest things to do when we’re really hurt or angry or upset. When someone else’s actions have damaged us to the point where we might never be the same again.
But in these situations, it’s worth trying to keep in mind that until we forgive, there’s only so far we can go. Until we forgive, whatever happened will continue to gnaw at us and won’t ever truly leave us alone.
Because forgiveness isn’t only about the people who wronged us. It’s also about us. And a big part of forgiveness is about being able to move on with our lives. Which is impossible if we can’t bring ourselves to forgive. If we’re going through life holding a grudge and we’re still angry about what happened, all we’re really doing is compounding the hurt and anger and pain.
Ultimately, our refusal to forgive keeps us trapped in whatever it is that happened.
If we choose not to forgive, that’s our decision. But we should try to remember that there’s something inherently selfish about forgiveness that we’re denying from ourselves. And the truth is, not forgiving other people doesn’t harm them so much as it continues to make us miserable and prevents us from moving on.
