Notes toward an absurd rationalization.

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Often we isolate ourselves from those who worry about nothing more than which moisturiser to switch to. I find that I am angry at my friends most of the time. I make friends with relative ease; I am experienced in imitating normalcy and behaving as though I were empty headed.

The thing that I have most difficulty with is keeping friends after great periods of time; I feel that I have discovered that they are not very nice people, that they are disloyal or dishonest. I am very loyal and honest, so much so that I abhor even white lies. I get so angry sometimes that I could vomit.

I have a friend who I have known for 3 years. He has been of great comfort to me in times where I have felt immobilized by the inevitable darknesses of life. Recently I have felt that he is selfish and that he rationalizes that if he is okay, so is the rest of the world, including me. This friend of mine has problems of his own, but they are superficial and within a weeks time will have been forgotten. I had never thought him selfish before. Perhaps I myself was selfish, so I didn't notice it. I estrange myself from everybody that I know, and sometimes I feel so intimidated by the vastness of the things I do not understand that my legs actually twitch to run away- I have to remind myself that this would look strange and that I cannot run so I wouldn't get very far. I do not want to estrange myself anymore.

When I feel particularly alone or scared, I recite 'If' by Rudyard Kipling in my head. 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for doubting too; if you can wait, and not be tired by waiting, or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, or, being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise;

If you can dream- and not make dreams your master; if you can think- and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same; if you can bear to hear the truth yourself has spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build them up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss; if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve you long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them, 'hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings- not lose the common touch; if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; if all men count with you, but none too much; if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run- yours is the earth and everything that is in it, and, which is more, you'll be a man my son!

Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does. Sorry to have gone on

If is a great poem.
If there is some way you could learn to be forgiving of other people's faults, you would find life easier and a lot more fun.

I appreciate the advice, and perhaps when I am 59 I will be able to do so. I am 16 and it is difficult to be tolerant of ignorance when I myself am so alert to the feelings of others. I see the little things people do to blight eachother and I feel as though I am witnessing a great miscarriage of justice. Is there any way to learn to be forgiving of other people's faults when they so directly effect you?

One could argue that lack of forgiveness is blighting them in and of itself. Generally it seems to me that forgiveness with consequence is the best route to take in general (the consequence itself being dynamic to the scenario at hand). Lack of forgiveness will usually hurt you more than the other person as lack of forgiveness shows that you are unable to cope with the actions that that person committed.

I know that it isn't beneficial to the psyche to harbour resentments. Anger is a poison which does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than to any object on which it is poured- I get it. But anger is irrational- it isn't often that absurdity is not followed by necessity, and necessity not followed by absurdity.

Then your problem isn't lack of learning to be forgiving but lack of self control and emotional control, which although highly relatable, are learned through different practices.