Are you more of a forgiving or vengeful person?

Post Reply New Topic

almost nobody is worth the trouble.

Both reactions require energy and focus. Personally, vengeance prolongs and deepens the negativity from the experience, forgiveness doesn?t. My past understanding of the term 'forgive and forget' split the process into two options, when in actuality forgetting/lack of emphasis only happened after forgiveness. +1 WerewolfPoet

An old wise friend once told me, "Forgiving without forgetting is the devil's way of convincing us to kick him out but leave the back door unlocked so he could sneak back in later when we're not watching."

I can forgive after a while, but I never forget. If someone hurts my feelings or does something to make me feel I can't rely on them, then I want nothing to do with them anymore. I don't take revenge, but I freeze them out of my life if possible.

I don't have much trouble forgiving people. Especially because of my faith and I guess just my internal disposition and fascinations with people, I love people in a platonic sense but still in a way that can unnerve people. So I can't not forgive, for me it hurts more not to do it and I don't know why I shouldn't.

Nelson Mandela said that holding a grudge is liking ingesting poison and expecting your enemy to die. Imho, "forgive but don't forget" is a bit different than genuinely forgiving a person. Yes, you can make assessments about behavior patterns in order not to get taken advantage of. But when I forgive somebody I want to forget it, it feels a lot better if you've never tried letting go like this often enough. Your love can be bigger than other's problems, maybe it won't help anyone but you, but mercy feels better than justice, it really does. Forgiving isn't about apologies, actually it isn't even about you feeling better yourself even though that comes with it. Forgiving is about believing that people are bigger than problems, that there are primary considerations that come before any problems, considerations like "I can still love this person and that would be wonderful, it would feel wonderful for both of us because we are still just two human beings after all, not so different as we would like to think, that person was someone's child too", "whether it was positive or negative this person is involved in my life now and I can gift them this same thing, agape (Greek for love without conditions) has the potential to help anyone it's given to". If you can't agree with all of that or feel it yet, just try it and see if that perspective comes with some repetition, it's still a good thing at least for you because it is by far superior as a coping mechanism to just let go, don't let the ego get in the way of even having pleasure because the ego can't always get pleasure but the id certainly can.

So what do you do if the person in question has a position in your life where you can't avoid them? Like a close family member?

I'd say I'm forgiving when it comes to other people but I find it very hard to forgive myself (for making mistakes etc).

That's a good question. I live my life in a manner that allows me to avoid even close family members if I want to. I live alone and have no presence on mainstream social media beyond email and a phone. But they're the ones least likely to bother me, and they know I want to keep to myself.

There are occasional difficulties, though. One time, when I lived out of town and was staying at my mother's house for Christmas, my youngest brother said or did something that bothered me. I responded by packing all my things back into the car and leaving, not even looking at him or answering when he asked why I was doing it. I almost drove right back out of town and spent Christmas alone until my other brother called me up and let me stay with him. Thanks to him, I had an excuse to stick around and later I was able to explain to the rest of my family what had happened, and that the real problem was with me.

I don't think most of them will ever really get it. But the upside is that they're a little more careful now with what they say around me.

I don't generally hold a grudge unless the person is acting like an a-hole in a chronic and consistent way. Then I'll go out of my way to upset them. If someone pisses me off once then I'll let it go. So somewhere in the middle.

I usually will stew for a day or two. I have a lot of interests in psychology, programming, and philosophy so it helps to take the edge off. I also found exercise helps a lot. Generally the stewing has been much less as I found success in my professional life. I also reoriented my thinking so that I take every failure as a chance to learn experience and use it to build up for next time. You won't believe how many times you can get for second chances. I've almost made my motto: "I win by losing".