Letting Go

A few years ago, I ran in to a former colleague at a store. It had been perhaps 15 years since I had seen him. We spent a few minutes catching up and then he asked if I ever ran in to Mr.X, whom we had both worked with at the same time. When I told him that I saw him every few years accidentally,  just as we were meeting now, he exploded saying that he hated the bastard and would like to punch his lights out.


I smiled and he did not think it was funny. He went off on a long riff as if it were yesterday of all the horrible things the man had done to him. "He was awful to you, too.  Remember the day he threw you under the bus at the client meeting so he could look good?" I agreed that I remembered it.


He was annoyed that I seemed so calm about it all. I gave him my standard speech about not looking at life through a rear view mirror. He shook his head rather violently. "What are you going to say next, Don? That I should do some expressive writing and get him out of my system or chant and meditate? Get a personality transplant?"


I told him pretty directly that this was hurting him a lot and not the person with whom we both had serious issues. Stealing a well worn line, I told him that he "was swallowing poison and expecting the other guy to die."


This broke the ice and I pulled out another platitude. Life has been good to both of us and we survived and prospered over the last few decades. I went on to say that you cannot live in the past or the future but only in the present. That jerk will not likely be part of our day today or tomorrow so let’s move on.


Letting go is hard to do. We all need to do it. I find that I can forgive and have done so on a number of times but forgetting is a lot harder.  People have also forgiven me. As I get older, I also find that I try to see the issue from the point of view of whomever was my nemesis. Was I wrong? Was he or she going through significant personal turmoil at the time so they lashed out at  those beneath them corporately (That proved to be true several times)?

Living in the present is liberating and, candidly, it is all that we have. If you are holding a long standing grudge, why not give it a try?

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.