Growth and Bitterness

It’s not about forgiveness. Outgrow the past and shrink the impact of whatever was done to you.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

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 relations…