Please forgive me for my cloudy morning brain but I thought this should be added. I had mentioned before that you should by no means feel compelled to grant forgiveness to everyone or even accept apologies. It’s generally a healthy practice and you should learn how, but you need to learn when to do so.

There is one exception to this, however, and you will need to do this to find any semblance of peace. You need to, at some point, forgive yourself. There is a practice in 12 Steps programs in the 4th Step where you make a list of your resentments towards people, groups of people, etc. The person who is very often left out of this list, no matter how rigorously honest the list is, is one’s self. The point here isn’t to make a hit list or to find reasons to justify one’s resentments but to then examine one’s part in each instance no matter how egregious the offense. That’s not to say that you have a part in every single case but if you’re honest you will find your part more often than not unless you happen to be a saint. You’re probably not. When you start looking at your part in any tensions in the relationship with the person you in effect humanize the other person and yourself. You recognize that you probably both could have done better, and in many cases, you could have very easily changed the outcome. Perhaps acting from trust and not fear, or letting go of some degree of self-interest or selfishness, etc. It’s easier to do than to explain but our resentments tell us more about ourselves than they do about other people.

Self-resentment, to a degree, is always present and we often have more than we would immediately admit to. It could be the result of deeds, but often it is a long-simmering funk simply about who we are and who we are born. We become painfully aware of our shortcomings, some of which could have been corrected by behavior, but some of which are simply and very tragically beyond our ability to control. I am physically awkward, or not attractive, or maybe I wasn’t born wealthy. You could probably write a long list of self-resentment if you got really honest. It grows when you become aware of how you let these feelings about yourself drive your behaviors with other people, whether it’s with family, friends or romantic interests. I’ve found that very often my own insecurities led to resentments of people, and of entire institutions. This was “my part” in many situations over time. Say for example I had a boss that was constantly riding me for performance and my resentment grew to a point where just getting up and going into work was painfully unpleasant. Examining it all honestly I had to accept that I really felt entitled to do as much or as little as I pleased, and it boiled down to my feeling that I wasn’t being paid enough (despite that it was the salary I accepted when I said I wanted the job), and thought the job was beneath me. The connect was that I also had resentments towards myself for being there in the first place. I hadn’t fulfilled what I believed was my potential. How did I get there in the first place? It probably had a lot to do with ill will towards myself for the position I was born into. I didn’t feel I could do better and at least part of me thought maybe I didn’t deserve better. Life isn’t fair, right? It became a back and forth, with I should have better, but I don’t deserve better, but other people have better, so I want better, and so on.

Anyway, that’s one example.

Getting back to my point, when you start to examine your part in any situation you begin to humanize your long list of antagonists. My boss wasn’t being an asshole, or maybe his reaction to my recalcitrance was out of proportion because of any number of his own insecurities but it doesn’t remove blame from me. It did tell me though that I needed to let go of my resentments towards him. It was necessary that I forgive him. (In the practice of the 12 steps I eventually went back and offered amends.)

The conundrum of forgiveness is that it’s often easier to forgive other people than it is ourselves, and that’s why most everyone has to be reminded to add themselves to their list. The conundrum of forgiveness is that it’s often necessary to humanize your antagonists and forgive them in order to learn to humanize and forgive yourself. You are no longer a Gollum when you stop seeing other people as a Gollum. Forgiving other people is the testing ground for the final letting go, of letting go of the biggest resentments of all.

Recognizing your resentments against yourself is frightening. It can seem at first to be an act of ritual self-flagellation. It is the one case in your life though where it simply must be done. You have to look at it. You have to forgive yourself, and you have to make the necessary amends to move forward. The jury is out on other people, but you may need to go through all that honestly just to get to yourself. It’s a process.

It’s funny really, though maybe not haha funny, how I’ve rationalized resentments over the course of my life. It deserves more space though maybe not now. It’s so curious though how it’s been easier to forgive some people than others based on different criteria. A betrayal that leads to a somewhat less serious consequence seems somehow worse than an act of violence by a damaged individual… There’s a hierarchy of hurts. Definitely something to expound upon later.