Let It Go...

I had a pretty bizarre encounter last week while on a run with 2 of my friends.  To make a long story short, an elderly couple was not too thrilled to have to share the road with us.  Rather than beep their horn, perhaps give a stern glance, or even call out to us to be more careful and use the sidewalks, they decided to purposefully run us off the road, roll down their window, and literally scream curse words at us and call us a pretty awful name.  These folks had a look of absolute fury on their faces, even though we were in no way endangering them, nor them us (well, until they tried to run us off the road, but I digress...)   I was fairly shocked at the time, but managed to laugh about it afterwards because it was just so darn crazy.  Just a few days later I witnessed another person treating someone else with a complete lack of compassion and a hate filled heart.  This incident did not make me laugh because it involved people I knew and not some random strangers on the road.  What on earth causes some folks to harbor so much hatred in their lives?   

The truth is, those are the extreme cases and in my gut I think some people's hearts have just hardened beyond belief.  But I think many of us are guilty of lashing out,  treating others unkindly, or just acting like an idiot quite often  - even though in our hearts, we are good people who are just trying to do our best.  Upon doing my own reflections I think so much of it has to do with our ability to let things go -  forgive and forget.  We've all heard it before and dispense this advice to others and try to do it ourselves - but it's not quite so easy.  I think it's human nature to keep a record of all the wrongs done to us.  I don't know if it's how we justify our own bad behavior, or if we use other people's transgressions to make ourselves feel superior.  But in the heat of an argument, it's the most commonly used form of defense - "Oh yeah? You're mad at me for that?? Well how about the time you did (fill in the blank)?"  It never works, of course, and just manages to deflect the real issue and dig up all kinds of awful feelings and emotions all around. 

But even worse, constantly keeping a tally of wrongs weakens our relationships with the people we care about. It causes a permanent wedge between folks.  And as the years go by, our inability to let some things go might prevent us from having some truly spectacular connections with those around us.  The longer we hang on to the garbage, the longer it has to become a part of our emotional fabric, and the harder it is to let it go, thus perpetuating a nasty cycle.  Now I wish I had the magical answer to how to truly forgive and forget.  I think a great first step is to be able to admit that you are guilty of doing it.  The older I become the more I'm trying to own my part in my relationship problems.  You can bet in my first years of marriage I would dig in my heels and try to win every argument. I wasn't going to be the first one to say sorry, no sirree.  But 15 years later, I've noticed that both Erik and I have learned how to fight productively.  We get mad at each other for sure, but usually in a very short amount of time, when the height of the emotion has passed, we are able to truly say we are sorry, acknowledge our fault (and we are BOTH always at fault somehow), and move on.  Erik is truly the one person I can say I forgive and forget wrongs with on a regular basis.  I don't keep a running record in my head to throw back in his face later.  I shouldn't be surprised, then, that my marriage is also the strongest and healthiest relationship I have.

I know, however, that I have a lot of work to do in other areas of my life, with other people in my life.  It  takes a lot of emotional maturity to truly forgive and forget, and I may never totally get there.  But it's certainly worth it to keep working on it.  And just because we are mature in age, doesn't mean we automatically mature in other areas.  It's taken years (39 of them for me to be exact) to make us who we are, good and bad.  We hang on to bad relationship habits for many reasons - the largest, I suspect, is the armor it provides our hearts.  But if we surround our hearts with too much defensive protection, it won't just keep out the bad guys, it will keep out the good guys as well.  I've seen it happen and I've seen it bring isolation and loneliness to people in the later years of their lives.  I've seen it render them unable to form meaningful relationships.  And that's no way to live. 

So I'm hoping that I find continual success working at this in my own life, and I hope all of you think about the role it plays in your life as well.  I don't think any of us want to be that old person someday, rolling down our windows, and screaming viscous curses at the world.  Truly we can all find a way to somehow let it go...