Growth and Bitterness
It’s not about forgiveness. Outgrow the past and shrink the impact of whatever was done to you.
What some people call forgiveness is simply outgrowing a situation where someone has enough power to wrong or harm you.
We don’t (necessarily) forgive; we grow such that some things are now beneath us, also such that there is nothing to claim from those who once wronged us, even if we were to seek retribution.
Businesses don’t bother trashing a rival, they outgrow and shrink competitors into irrelevance. How big things are is subjective, and they appear smaller the larger you become.
Your bitterness should rightly concern you, and no, not because of the things done to you, and not because of the nonchalance of those who did them. (These are relevant, and I am not trying to diminish their significance.)
Rather, your bitterness is evidence of a lack of growth such that the said transgressions appear large in comparison.
Being dumped, for example, is painful; no one likes rejection. But even the one being left will have seen the decline of a relationship such that this eventual shocker shouldn’t be so shocking. However, being left when your life is a mess is doubly painful. “How can he leave me now, when I am in this state!” you will rightly be pained.
It is more about your state than this collapse of the relationship. If your life improves, you will go on to meet and find other people, but if it doesn’t, you probably won’t. There will be an inverse relationship between your growth (over time) and the level of bitterness you feel.
As you improve and find new love, this becomes an episode in the past. However, if you stagnate, if you remain in the state that you were in—the one that may have contributed to someone leaving you—then being dumped remains the gigantic event it was.
Occasionally, you look back at times when people didn’t do right by you, wronged you, or obstructed your growth. They didn’t help when they could have, they caused immense pain to you in childhood, they sabotaged a business deal that really meant much to you, etc.
But then you look again, and you realize that there isn’t much to claim even if you wanted revenge or retribution. They don’t have anything you want; they are now small in comparison, you have simply grown and reduced their influence and control—over you and anything that matters to you—to insignificant.
Some people keep wondering why some stuff done to them still appears to have so much power over them, they think they are bad people for not forgiving; they think they are wicked for holding grudges. They search frantically for a way out. They wish they had purer hearts.
But this is hardly the case. We aren’t as good as we believe, and it has little, if anything, to do with forgiveness. But we aren’t as bad as we think, either, and it has nothing to do with “wickedness”.
We just haven’t grown to shrink the impact and role of what happened to us. “She left me when I needed her most” is still true today, and he feels it. “I was so messed up emotionally” is still true, and you fear that the next man will leave you, too. “They colonized and looted this country dry” still hurts because your nation hasn’t made great strides since independence.
We know why we were wronged; we know why we were taken advantage of; we know how we lost because we didn’t have the credibility that would cause those who matter to listen to us. And we know that things haven’t changed much. In fact, we know that they largely remain the same.
We look around, and we see that the main problem is with ourselves. Things done to us remain so huge because we remain small. This reality pains us because it is true, and now, with the passage of time, we fear that we are even losing confidence in our ability to grow and leave this state such that this bitterness won’t gnaw at us forever.
I must explain something, and I will do so seriously: some things are hard to outgrow or they simply take time. Some things happened to us when we were children, a time when we were vulnerable and could not defend and protect ourselves. We cannot expect the pain and trauma of, say, the atrocities of war, to just disappear. Poverty is not something you just get out of so fast, no matter how good or skilled you are at what you do.
While the point remains the same—we should strive to get to a point where we can handle these things—it must be acknowledged that some things are much harder than others, and the magnitude of what is to be outgrown varies.
Victimhood isn’t good: no one cares. But only a fool can fail to acknowledge that some issues are much more difficult to handle than others. Even when we cannot help, we should at least be understanding.
Nevertheless, when all is said and done, all things remain ours to handle. Everything, even small things, will remain painful and have a larger-than-proportional effect if we don’t grow with time.
This is not about forgiveness—actually, I think many people attribute things that have nothing to do with forgiveness to it. You can grow and shrink the impact of the things that happened to you. You can also remain the same, inevitably sinking into the despondency that no one can rescue you from.
By improving ourselves and our lives, we can outgrow situations that once caused us pain.
This perspective offers hope and encourages self-improvement as a path to healing, rather than dwelling on forgiveness or seeking revenge.
This is a thoughtful and insightful essay - Thank you for reminding us brother.
I've recently realized how bitter I am towards all men because of what I experienced. but my bitterness is a lasting impact of the trauma, and I don't want what happened to me to keep affecting me now when I know that most men are good people who aren't going to hurt me.