So, that was in September. It was wonderful to read later in November this personal history in the New Yorker, about a "writer spends forty years looking for his bully." The author, Allen Kurzweil, wrote there:
Without time, we cannot learn. Without time, we cannot heal.In his case, it took him four decades of maniacal devotion to track down his bully and make peace with that past. Thankfully, I do not have that mania nor do I have that need to settle that business before I die. If left unfinished, so be it. It will be a long list of unchecked items on my to-do list. This unfinished business is simply not that important.
The world is full of assholes who love to mess around with the lives of others.
What’s the use of getting over things? Wrongs have been perpetrated: assaults on your dignity, your self-image, your fragile well-being. And they’ve gotten away with it—they’re reveling (no doubt prospering), smug in their galling impunity, probably laughing at you even now. Bullies, critics, snobs, the so-called friend who slept with your one true love in college and has now tried to friend you on Facebook as though it never happened. Shitty parents, lecherous mentors, crappy former spouses: It’s a world of assholes out there. Fuck them all.
Forget and forgive, the old saying goes. I could never understand those two. Why forget? Why forgive? "It’s a world of assholes out there. Fuck them all" doesn't mean I should forget nor forgive those who did me wrong. More so when my blood pressure is normal ;)
Especially if you’re a writer: Consider it as the raw material for your next book, for an entire oeuvre, even.
Or, raw materials for the blog-posts for this wannabe writer!
"wallowing is one of life’s great unacknowledged pleasures" as that author puts it in the introductory paragraphs where she reviews Kurzweil's book, from which that New Yorker piece was excerpted.
There is a huge difference, however, between wallowing and viewing the world as a worthless place, versus wallowing while enjoying the world and the vastness of this universe.
Forget? Never.
Forgive? Never.
3 comments:
I don't understand the forget part. I can understand skepticism of the forgive part. From my reading, the important factor is not giving the hurt or the perpetrator power over you by dwelling on it. Studies show that most times, bullies don't even remember tormenting anyone. Studies also show that holding a grudge against someone who hurt you is far more damaging to you than it is to the person who hurt you. Likely he will never know that he caused such pain. He will almost certainly never know you hold a grudge. Whether you call it letting go or getting over it or forgiving and forgetting, what matters is not wallowing in self-pity and not maintaining a permanent victim status. What matters is moving on and enjoying life in spite of the jerks who try to get you down.
To each his own. I have the opposite point of view. I am all for forget and forgive. Many a time I am not successful in doing it, but I try.
Neither forgetting nor forgiving, even without going through a forty year track down, is, in my book, holding a grudge and seething. Not worth it.
If the answer is blowing in the wind, my response to your comments is in the next post ;)
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