Saturday, October 2, 2010

30 Days of Blogging, Day 28: Something you have to forgive someone else for

Like the "someone who disappointed you" post, this is stuff I'd rather not think about.  I like to believe that I forgive and forget the past, and generally I think that's true.  I'm not a grudge-holder; that takes way too much energy away from much more important things.  Holding on to anger punishes you, not the person you're angry at.

With that said, I'll admit that there are people I find it difficult to forgive.  One of those is a former professor toward whom I still harbor some hard feelings.  She's very famous, and having her name on my resume has always been an enormous benefit to me--my usual reply, when someone mentions her, is "I was very lucky to have the chance to work with her."  That's true, so I don't mind saying it.  And I know that saying anything negative about her just makes me look bad, because she's accomplished a lot and I can't say the same.  So I just don't say anything about her, most of the time.     

But I still believe that she didn't need to be as unkind and dismissive as she was.  Once you've had some measure of success, I think you can afford to be a little more gracious to people who are struggling and just getting started.  She said things that honestly made me question whether I should even bother to continue writing.  If she didn't think I was good enough to get published, she might have just let me find that out when I didn't get published.  Instead, she seemed intent on letting me know that my work wasn't even worthy of her attention.

I don't know if I hold a grudge against her, exactly.  I don't think I do.  I don't feel angry when I think about her; I don't feel like she's undeserving of the success she's had.  But I do feel like I'll have to forgive her, eventually, for offering so little of what I expected when I signed up for her workshop, and for having a heart so much less generous than her work suggests.
   

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