I have trouble letting things go. I take a long time to anger, piling up excuses for the person like sandbags against the hurt of seeing their true colors. But once that indignant fire begins to burn, I stoke those coals like my life depends on it, often long after the situation that caused it has past. There’s more of a grudge holder in me than I’d like to admit.
Why is it so hard to let go? To some of us, the concept of erasing actions that have happened and starting from something as clean as the fresh blanket of snow outside seems fake and disingenuous. Maybe it’s because of an intense sensitivity to injustice, or maybe it’s due to depth of the scars, but forgiving isn’t always easy.
Several years ago, a man I knew from the community got involved in a business deal that I was pursuing. I had generally liked him prior to this and expected it to be a good thing that he was involved. I would soon be very surprised. He ended up steering the deal in a different direction, away from us, and toward a firm he felt was a better fit.
I was livid. I refused to acknowledge his existence at functions. When forced to speak to him, I kept it to single words and would not deign to smile. I am embarrassed to admit that I held onto this stance for years. My sense of injustice had been wound up and I couldn’t put it to bed.
The thing was, within a few months I was extremely glad that the deal hadn’t gone our way - it wouldn’t have been right for anyone. Yet that feeling of betrayal lingered and festered. It threw me off every time I had to be around him, plunging me back into that whirlwind of startled emotions when the deal had fallen apart years ago. Emotions that tasted a lot like fear.
But to understand why, we have to back up. Often, what we react to in a situation is not how good or bad it is, but how closely it matches our expectations. As the Joker said, “Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.” If we expect things to go badly, and they do, we aren’t afraid. Annoyed, maybe, or sad, depending on how serious the issue is, but not afraid. We saw it coming. However, when we expected things to go well and they don’t, we panic. We thought we had the future all figured out and suddenly, it’s unknown again with monsters lurking in the shadows of every turn. And then the blame starts, with whomever didn’t behave according to our expectations shouldering most of our feelings of betrayal.
But where do those expectations come from? How could they be so far off from reality? When the dust has settled on the moments I’ve felt the most betrayed, I can look back and see that my expectations came from what I yearned for, not from what that person was capable of offering (regardless of their words). The mismatch of expectations to reality created something that was doomed before it began.
But does that mean the hope of what could be must die too?
Charles R. Snyder, a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, found that hope has 3 elements:
Goals: I have a clear vision of what I want
Agency: I have influence over what happens in my life
Multiple pathways: It’s not all riding on one thing, if I encounter a setback or an obstacle, I will find another way to succeed.
Most of us can handle the first one. We have dreams, goals, and fantasies. We know what we want, or at least close enough to aim in the right direction. But the next two can tangle us up. We start to attach our plans too tightly to our goals, believing that this deal, this person, this house, this job has got to be the one to make us happy.
Wanting to hold onto that vision is natural, even healthy. But we don’t always understand in the beginning how we are meant to get there. A wise friend told me that God has three answers: “Yes”; “Yes but not right now”; and “No, because there’s something better.” Admitting that we chose wrong can be difficult because it feels like letting go of the dream itself, when in fact it’s more like freeing ourselves to embrace an even better pathway. We have to disconnect the misstep from the vision.
And therein lies both the pain and the relief. We can acknowledge that there is something we want badly. We can see that in an effort to get there quickly, we may have chosen the wrong path, one that was never going to get us to our destination. And we can grieve for the loss of time spent pursuing the wrong course.
But just on the other side of that is peace. That peace comes from accepting that we chose to see someone not for who they are, but for who we needed them to be. And that means we have learned something about ourselves. We know now what we truly need, and we can choose again. And that is hope.
Forgiveness, for me, is not about excusing the other person or their actions. It’s about pardoning myself for asking something of someone that they weren’t able to give. It’s about recognizing that I latched onto the wrong pathway, and giving myself permission to go back and try again. And it’s about opening my own eyes to what’s important to me, and who is in alignment with that.
If 2018 was a year of pushing myself to take on new challenges, 2019 was a year of learning to let it flow. It was a year of learning to recognize people and opportunities for what they bring to the table, and select their place in my life based on what they can offer in the real world, not some fantasy I’ve created. But it also means keeping my eyes and spirit open for the good in places and people I may not have known existed, who just may bring exactly the right thing in a completely unexpected form.
What if rather than papering over the past, forgiving means choosing to invest in the future? The word itself sounds like a combination of “forward” and “giving”. I like to think of it as choosing to give my energy to the future. In many cases, that means letting go of the old, sad story. It’s a book that can be pulled out if need be, to remember the lessons. But maybe, at this time of year more than ever, the time is right to put that book on the shelf, and begin a new story.
Erin Rollenhagen is the author of Soul Uprising, available now. Click here to purchase a first edition of Soul Uprising. Also available on Amazon.