You Can't Truly Forgive Someone Without Doing This First

It can be so hard to forgive because ― so often ― we simply are in the right and the scale of the folly, thoughtlessness and meanness of others seems utterly beyond our own measure. The hyper-critical individual has lived too much, as their personality was growing, around people who couldn’t take a gentle hint ― so they came to rely on blunt assertions. Behind every failing ― behind everything that’s wrong and infuriating about those we meet ― is a decisive trauma encountered before someone could cope with it properly. But that doesn’t attenuate the need for some moments when we limber up to utter that most implausible word ‘sorry’ – or indeed stretch our ethical imagination in order to pronounce those even more arduous and unnatural words, ‘I forgive you.’ “We must forgive because ― not right now, not over this, but one day, over something ― we need to be forgiven.”