What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments

During which we knew them.

And they have changed since then…

We must also remember

That at every meeting we are meeting a Stranger.

T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

If you’re a human being, you’ve probably resented someone for something in your life. Maybe you still do. Most people have heard the quote, attributed to various sources: “Resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Holding onto resentments, and refusing to forgive past wrongs, keeps you mired in the place where you were when that person hurt you. As time goes on, you are different. They are different. Maybe they would hurt you in the same way again. But forgiving wrongs and letting go of resentments is a powerful act of faith – of believing that people can grow and change. Maybe you’re a person who can no longer be hurt by that person. Maybe that person is out of your life, or dead, and just isn’t in a position to hurt you any more. Maybe that person is a different person now, and wouldn’t hurt you in the same way again. Maybe that person wishes they had done things differently. If someone hurts you, and their wish is that they had not hurt you, is that easier to forgive? If you refuse to acknowledge that the object of your resentment has grown and changed and wishes they had done things differently, you’re stuck in a fixed idea of what that person is. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future by creating the conditions of change – change in you, change in the other person, change in what you have between you. 

For a long time now, I’ve tried to assume good intent – that people are doing the best they know how. There are people with really meager tools – what they “know how” to do can be misguided and sorely lacking. But hardly anyone sets out to be a sh!tty parent, or an untrustworthy friend, or mentally ill, or an addict, or even history’s greatest monster. We all have our justifications, for all of our behavior. If we work backward from saying, “That seems unforgivable, but what need were they trying to meet by calling me a failure/stealing my stash/defending Donald Trump?” If we can find the kernel of emotional need, or self-justification, or how they thought they were helping someone that wasn’t ourselves, we can see different priorities that led the person to perform that harm – priorities maybe not so different from our own.

For instance, I spent years churning with resentment toward my dad. He was a really resentful father figure, not my biological dad, but he filled that role…mmm… grudgingly. He worked at a job he hated, and felt like that should be the extent of his parenting obligations. He had a lot of unfulfilled dreams – of being a writer, being a teacher. He was derisive, and pretty cruel to my mom, and that pissed me off. He wasn’t a monster, he wasn’t abusive, he was just an a$$hole. 

I’ve been realizing that he WAS doing to the best he could, but it’s just that his tools were very sadly limited. Seeing him as a small person who was doing his best with the limited tools he had has let me forgive him – and it didn’t even happen gradually, it happened all at once. I’m able to let that sh!t go. And it’s been really healing for me. And he died – if there is any poisoning resentment stronger than a refusal to forgive the dead, I can’t picture it. There is no one to feel your hatred; who are you even trying to poison?

But with all the change I’ve undergone, it makes me wonder what his capacity for change might have been. If I can grow, why can’t he have grown? What if these last couple of decades could have created conditions for us to have had a new kind of relationship? Maybe he would have mellowed. He came close to my mom leaving him, and seemed to make an effort at change after that – what if he really had changed? What if my own growth as someone less depressed, less in a miserable prison of my own making, would have made me more patient with him and more forgiving of him? Maybe we would have changed together. What if he would have been excited to see me as a writer? Honestly his pre-death track record suggested he would have been jealous and resentful himself, but since he’s dead, I can imagine whatever I want. I’ll just picture him being a little bit proud.

Holding onto resentments belies a fixed mindset – that the person who hurt you can’t grow into someone more skilled at being in your life.  And what if the act of forgiveness changes things between you? What if learning that they are redeemed in your eyes changes the relationship?

A brilliant friend of mine offered this: “People aren’t always capable of giving you what you need, but that doesn’t make you any less deserving.” My father couldn’t give me the love I needed. I thought it was because I hadn’t earned it, didn’t deserve it. It was because he didn’t have it to give. Maybe understanding that while he was alive would have changed things between us. I will never know.