If I remember right the Christian Cooper situation was much more complicated than originally reported (surprise!). He’d made threatening comments to several other women in the park before and his actions towards Amy were more ominous than first described.
It was an ambiguous situation, I think. He was perfectly in the right to tell Amy Cooper to put her dog on a leash (I am a dog-owner who is a stickler about appropriate behavior from dogs in public places), but Amy Cooper was small, alone, and had been sexually assaulted in the past. Her panicked and then aggressive reaction is not what I would have done, but I’m tall and strong and have thankfully not been a victim of assault. So I wish we all could have been better about putting ourselves in her place and maybe had more understanding for why she acted as she did.
Belinda sounds horrible. I would have moved out right then (though easier said than done)! And the sewage! Actual sewage is where I draw the line. Malign me in the school paper but I can’t handle sewage.
I wonder if it’s easier for people to cultivate forgiveness as a trait if they have experienced something truly unforgivable. Every other “garden-variety horrible thing” seems not so bad in comparison. Maybe?
It’s a bit like pain. If you’ve experienced the pain of childbirth, nothing other than that can be really said to “hurt” -- not seriously.
This is an excellent point, and I wonder if it helps to explain why young people can be so unforgiving of offenses that we older folks would shrug off? Life is long, and even a mean feral cat, a litter box in the kitchen, a very public insult, and party to which I was not invited that also wrecked the plumbing is, with a bit of perspective, small potatoes.
Thanks! I stayed friendly with Amy (who was not the ringleader and, when not under Belinda’s malign influence, was very nice), but Belinda? Once I moved out and shook the dust of that apartment from my feet, I never spoke to her again.
POWERFUL. I am currently working on maintaining positive, thankful pathways in my mind that I have fought hard to develop over the past 30 years. For whatever reason (life changes, relationship changes, etc.) my more natural, though atrophied, negative mental paths have been easier to walk down lately. While surprising, I admit that I may be holding on to grudges I would normally let go. It's not entirely clear if the grudges or the negativity came first, but the two seem connected. So, I'm going back to basics, praying in gratitude, keeping a gratitude journal and forcing my mind to focus on all the positive things in my life. It worked thirty years ago when I had far less to be grateful for and I believe it will work again! Thank you for reaffirming my thoughts on grudges and leaving them behind (or not) in this article. Always a pleasure to hear your perspective!
Great essay. I've been scolded for being too quick to forgive, when the offender is clearly insincere and only comes back because he wants something. My strong need to feel like I'm being helpful outweighs the risk, I guess. I can think of a few petty grudges I keep mostly because I just never really liked the person, rather than them doing anything in particular to harm me.
One real grudge I keep is against an old boss of mine. We worked together for years, she taught me quite a lot and I respected her. Eventually our company was bought, and they parachuted in some smarmy director who had his own team with him. My boss was effectively cut out, and also was told by the new director to demote me so that his guy could take over the role. She did it, without any word of apology or sense of us being in it together. When I confronted her about it later she just blinked at me and said that's all she had to say. I felt so betrayed, and resigned soon after.
Years later we bumped into each other at a shop, and she came over to say hi and make friendly small-talk. I glared back and said "I think you already told me everything you had to say. Please don't speak to me again." Quelle grudge!
That is a justified grudge! I like your point that you had expected your boss to think of the two of you as a team, and her betrayal was this especially galling--plus there were real-life financial consequences! Not cool!
But in general your approach reminds me of the research into the best way to act during the Prisoner’s Dilemma. People came up with all these complicated algorithms, and in the end tit-for-tat was by far the most effective. And then later they discovered that friendly tit-for-tat (where the software occasionally threw in random forgiveness in response to bad treatment) was the most effective of all.
I love this so much, and will be watching the Netflix show Beef! My grudge is similar to the one portrayed in the show... my modest, middle-class childhood friends and I versus a wealthy and somewhat domineering "friend" I made in adulthood. Recently, I hosted a gathering for all my friends, including both my tight-knit group of childhood friends and my adulthood friend group. My childhood friends traveled some distance to attend it, and I was so excited to finally be able to introduce them to my adult friends. The aforementioned elitist rich friend arrived at the event, met my childhood friends very briefly, then, behind my back, walked directly into the other room and made unkind and ungracious remarks about them (my childhood friends) to my other adulthood friends (all of whom either defended my childhood friends or declined to judge them, to their credit). I was recently told about this by another friend (outside of the adult friend group) who overheard the slander. Considering she did this while she was a guest in my home, at an event I spent lots of time and money cooking for and organizing, I feel really disrespected.
I've always had issues with this person bc I find her to be classist, overly self-referencing, and dismissive of the lived experiences of others. To me, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I want to forgive eventually, but I have 0% interest in remaining friends w this person.
Also, as a Jewish reader, I thank you for your very accurate representation of my inner struggle about "forgiving" antisemites. It's especially hard when the bigotry comes from a person who otherwise paints themselves as an advocate for oppressed group. I always wonder why Jews aren't allowed to be included in their activism.
That “friend” was awful, and I am so glad to hear that your other friends did the right thing. It sounds like you are smart not to remain friends with her.
Thanks for making the point about Judaism and forgiveness too. I once taught the Ozick essay to my high school students on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I was shocked at their reaction. Most of them thought Ozick was cruel and wrong. Most of the students were Christian and very young; in retrospect I should have realized that they didn’t have the life experience to understand why forgiveness in this context would be very complicated, especially for Jewish readers who might know Holocaust survivors personally (as I do).
In law school, I lived with a married couple who had some immense undiagnosed damage going on, were splitting up from each other, and were manipulative drama queens in a dangerous and bizarre way. In one particularly egregious example, they waged a cyberbullying campaign anonymously against my at-the-time S.O. until she checked herself into the psych ward, then they propositioned me for a threesome. Verbal abuse, false abuse allegations, suicide scares, negligence in the apartment, throwing things at people, explosive fights and then lovebombing me with hundreds of dollars of gifts - living with them for a year was a nightmare.
I forgave them within a month of moving out, and honestly, it's just because 1) it's clear that for whatever damage they were causing me, they were utterly miserable people whose coping skills were failing them at all angles and 2) I was really bored of being angry at them. I was tired of anger at them taking up space in my mind when I had other things to do. I have a personality prone to ruminating, and in the month after I lived with them, I felt like I did nothing but stew on how wronged I was. I had to shift moods for my own good.
The way I see it now is that those two people were in a lot of pain and that my wishing them pain from afar was not helping them and not helping me. I wish them healing from afar, because I know that the more they suffer the more they make others around them suffer - and even aside from that, I just don't want there to be more suffering in the world. Even to those who made me suffer. Who benefits from more pain out there on this planet? How does that make the world a better place to be in?
If I believed their suffering would make them better people, I might wish for them to learn their lesson, but I know that's not how things work. They lost a roommate and a friend and a lot of their social circle when their misdeeds came to light. If they didn't learn a lesson from that, I'm sure no amount of depression or mental illness or poor situations would enlighten them.
I recently saw the musician Ruston Kelly perform; his schtick is that he was a hardcore addict until making music helped him get clean, and much of his songwriting is about making peace with how you've wronged others and letting go of others who wronged you. Two songs of his currently come to mind off his new album: "Mending Song" and "Let Only Love Remain." I'm attaching the former here because I feel like there are few songs that stick in my heart as having that sort of "forgiveness is for us" focus on the self, and because the "I wish you only happiness and healing / and I hope you're finding it out there" lyric is constantly in my mind these days.
And thank you so much for sharing that beautiful song and video! Seeing him watering his plant and repairing his house made me think of the Zen wisdom, “chop wood, carry water.” Really lovely and moving!
Whoa. I am so happy to hear that you were able to extricate yourself from such a toxic environment. You make a very smart point that holding a grudge gets boring after a while. And I agree with you that very few of us are capable of learning through suffering. Most of the time suffering makes us worse. This was Primo Levi’s devastating point in Survival in Auschwitz. If we are able to meet bad behavior not with revenge but with kindness and understanding, or at least forbearance, we will be helping to improve the world. Thanks for sharing your story.
If I remember right the Christian Cooper situation was much more complicated than originally reported (surprise!). He’d made threatening comments to several other women in the park before and his actions towards Amy were more ominous than first described.
It was an ambiguous situation, I think. He was perfectly in the right to tell Amy Cooper to put her dog on a leash (I am a dog-owner who is a stickler about appropriate behavior from dogs in public places), but Amy Cooper was small, alone, and had been sexually assaulted in the past. Her panicked and then aggressive reaction is not what I would have done, but I’m tall and strong and have thankfully not been a victim of assault. So I wish we all could have been better about putting ourselves in her place and maybe had more understanding for why she acted as she did.
Belinda sounds horrible. I would have moved out right then (though easier said than done)! And the sewage! Actual sewage is where I draw the line. Malign me in the school paper but I can’t handle sewage.
I wonder if it’s easier for people to cultivate forgiveness as a trait if they have experienced something truly unforgivable. Every other “garden-variety horrible thing” seems not so bad in comparison. Maybe?
It’s a bit like pain. If you’ve experienced the pain of childbirth, nothing other than that can be really said to “hurt” -- not seriously.
This is an excellent point, and I wonder if it helps to explain why young people can be so unforgiving of offenses that we older folks would shrug off? Life is long, and even a mean feral cat, a litter box in the kitchen, a very public insult, and party to which I was not invited that also wrecked the plumbing is, with a bit of perspective, small potatoes.
Yes now that you mention it, it might be why people tend to mellow with age!
I would have moved and had nothing to do with them ever again.
Thanks! I stayed friendly with Amy (who was not the ringleader and, when not under Belinda’s malign influence, was very nice), but Belinda? Once I moved out and shook the dust of that apartment from my feet, I never spoke to her again.
POWERFUL. I am currently working on maintaining positive, thankful pathways in my mind that I have fought hard to develop over the past 30 years. For whatever reason (life changes, relationship changes, etc.) my more natural, though atrophied, negative mental paths have been easier to walk down lately. While surprising, I admit that I may be holding on to grudges I would normally let go. It's not entirely clear if the grudges or the negativity came first, but the two seem connected. So, I'm going back to basics, praying in gratitude, keeping a gratitude journal and forcing my mind to focus on all the positive things in my life. It worked thirty years ago when I had far less to be grateful for and I believe it will work again! Thank you for reaffirming my thoughts on grudges and leaving them behind (or not) in this article. Always a pleasure to hear your perspective!
Thanks for this lovely comment, dear friend! I would love to hear how your positive mental pathways project is going!
Great essay. I've been scolded for being too quick to forgive, when the offender is clearly insincere and only comes back because he wants something. My strong need to feel like I'm being helpful outweighs the risk, I guess. I can think of a few petty grudges I keep mostly because I just never really liked the person, rather than them doing anything in particular to harm me.
One real grudge I keep is against an old boss of mine. We worked together for years, she taught me quite a lot and I respected her. Eventually our company was bought, and they parachuted in some smarmy director who had his own team with him. My boss was effectively cut out, and also was told by the new director to demote me so that his guy could take over the role. She did it, without any word of apology or sense of us being in it together. When I confronted her about it later she just blinked at me and said that's all she had to say. I felt so betrayed, and resigned soon after.
Years later we bumped into each other at a shop, and she came over to say hi and make friendly small-talk. I glared back and said "I think you already told me everything you had to say. Please don't speak to me again." Quelle grudge!
That is a justified grudge! I like your point that you had expected your boss to think of the two of you as a team, and her betrayal was this especially galling--plus there were real-life financial consequences! Not cool!
But in general your approach reminds me of the research into the best way to act during the Prisoner’s Dilemma. People came up with all these complicated algorithms, and in the end tit-for-tat was by far the most effective. And then later they discovered that friendly tit-for-tat (where the software occasionally threw in random forgiveness in response to bad treatment) was the most effective of all.
I love this so much, and will be watching the Netflix show Beef! My grudge is similar to the one portrayed in the show... my modest, middle-class childhood friends and I versus a wealthy and somewhat domineering "friend" I made in adulthood. Recently, I hosted a gathering for all my friends, including both my tight-knit group of childhood friends and my adulthood friend group. My childhood friends traveled some distance to attend it, and I was so excited to finally be able to introduce them to my adult friends. The aforementioned elitist rich friend arrived at the event, met my childhood friends very briefly, then, behind my back, walked directly into the other room and made unkind and ungracious remarks about them (my childhood friends) to my other adulthood friends (all of whom either defended my childhood friends or declined to judge them, to their credit). I was recently told about this by another friend (outside of the adult friend group) who overheard the slander. Considering she did this while she was a guest in my home, at an event I spent lots of time and money cooking for and organizing, I feel really disrespected.
I've always had issues with this person bc I find her to be classist, overly self-referencing, and dismissive of the lived experiences of others. To me, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I want to forgive eventually, but I have 0% interest in remaining friends w this person.
Also, as a Jewish reader, I thank you for your very accurate representation of my inner struggle about "forgiving" antisemites. It's especially hard when the bigotry comes from a person who otherwise paints themselves as an advocate for oppressed group. I always wonder why Jews aren't allowed to be included in their activism.
That “friend” was awful, and I am so glad to hear that your other friends did the right thing. It sounds like you are smart not to remain friends with her.
Thanks for making the point about Judaism and forgiveness too. I once taught the Ozick essay to my high school students on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I was shocked at their reaction. Most of them thought Ozick was cruel and wrong. Most of the students were Christian and very young; in retrospect I should have realized that they didn’t have the life experience to understand why forgiveness in this context would be very complicated, especially for Jewish readers who might know Holocaust survivors personally (as I do).
In law school, I lived with a married couple who had some immense undiagnosed damage going on, were splitting up from each other, and were manipulative drama queens in a dangerous and bizarre way. In one particularly egregious example, they waged a cyberbullying campaign anonymously against my at-the-time S.O. until she checked herself into the psych ward, then they propositioned me for a threesome. Verbal abuse, false abuse allegations, suicide scares, negligence in the apartment, throwing things at people, explosive fights and then lovebombing me with hundreds of dollars of gifts - living with them for a year was a nightmare.
I forgave them within a month of moving out, and honestly, it's just because 1) it's clear that for whatever damage they were causing me, they were utterly miserable people whose coping skills were failing them at all angles and 2) I was really bored of being angry at them. I was tired of anger at them taking up space in my mind when I had other things to do. I have a personality prone to ruminating, and in the month after I lived with them, I felt like I did nothing but stew on how wronged I was. I had to shift moods for my own good.
The way I see it now is that those two people were in a lot of pain and that my wishing them pain from afar was not helping them and not helping me. I wish them healing from afar, because I know that the more they suffer the more they make others around them suffer - and even aside from that, I just don't want there to be more suffering in the world. Even to those who made me suffer. Who benefits from more pain out there on this planet? How does that make the world a better place to be in?
If I believed their suffering would make them better people, I might wish for them to learn their lesson, but I know that's not how things work. They lost a roommate and a friend and a lot of their social circle when their misdeeds came to light. If they didn't learn a lesson from that, I'm sure no amount of depression or mental illness or poor situations would enlighten them.
I recently saw the musician Ruston Kelly perform; his schtick is that he was a hardcore addict until making music helped him get clean, and much of his songwriting is about making peace with how you've wronged others and letting go of others who wronged you. Two songs of his currently come to mind off his new album: "Mending Song" and "Let Only Love Remain." I'm attaching the former here because I feel like there are few songs that stick in my heart as having that sort of "forgiveness is for us" focus on the self, and because the "I wish you only happiness and healing / and I hope you're finding it out there" lyric is constantly in my mind these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnAwDqUdvtQ
And thank you so much for sharing that beautiful song and video! Seeing him watering his plant and repairing his house made me think of the Zen wisdom, “chop wood, carry water.” Really lovely and moving!
Whoa. I am so happy to hear that you were able to extricate yourself from such a toxic environment. You make a very smart point that holding a grudge gets boring after a while. And I agree with you that very few of us are capable of learning through suffering. Most of the time suffering makes us worse. This was Primo Levi’s devastating point in Survival in Auschwitz. If we are able to meet bad behavior not with revenge but with kindness and understanding, or at least forbearance, we will be helping to improve the world. Thanks for sharing your story.