Day 29: Betrayal & Forgiveness
It’s easy to talk about betrayal because if you’ve lived long enough, you’ll have experienced it. Humans are flawed afterall and depending on the source of the betrayal, it can feel different. Betrayal can feel like someone searing you with a hot iron. It can also feel like you stubbing your toe against the leg of a hard table and you are limping around with a swollen foot. It can feel like mourning, like grief of a different kind. Where you are wailing and humming and grieving for yourself and for the relationship. It can feel like heartbreak. How you feel like your heart is about to burst because of the sheer enormity of pain you feel. You might be going about your day and next thing, you’ll see something that randomly reminds you of the betrayal and it causes you to breakdown again. It can almost make you feel crazy. You start to doubt yourself and your decision making abilities. You might start thinking- maybe you are a terrible judge of character afterall or maybe you ignored the red flags. And sometimes it’s either of those things but other times, it can be none of those. Because humans are unpredictable.
I mean granted, yes, we are sometimes guilty of looking at life and our people through rose coloured glasses. We try to confirm our bias. Once we’ve decided that a person is good, we try to overlook all the other bad and constantly make a case for them. But we forget that the glass is never really just half full, it could also be half empty. Life is about perspective. Nobody is a beacon of 100 percent goodness. We are so deeply flawed and we live in an even more flawed world. Because of this, I try to see every side of a person, both the good and bad, because they exist. I put them side by side and I weigh them.
I ask myself whether I can cope with the bad as well. How bad is bad even? Someone who lies on default, is too bad for me but inherently, they might not be a bad person. So really, it’s not even a question of their goodness versus their badness, rather, it’s about their positives and their negatives. It’s about all the other things that contribute to the individual. It’s the morality of the person. A person might talk a big game but how they manifest is what should be looked out for. It’s the principle of the individual that contributes to how they manifest in myriad of ways. Hence ignoring these things and focusing on just the good can be detrimental to ourselves.
However, there’s also the parts where nothing we could have done, could have made us anticipate a betrayal. Because people change. Someone whom you properly vetted could betray you in such a visceral way that it brings you to your knees. You almost do not even recognize the person because maybe, they’ve been wearing a mask. In this sense, it feels like betrayal is almost inevitable and with everyone you let into your circle, you run the risk of being betrayed. Sometimes I wonder if this is a risk worth taking but then life answers for me- yes. Because no man is an island. We need people. So if you cannot control the tendency to be betrayed, what then can we control? Forgiveness. We can control whether to forgive or not.
In one of Sahil Bloom’s curiosity chronicle newsletters, he talked about a concept called The two arrows of life and there’s an interesting statement there that applies to this subject;
It took me many years to realize that the Compound Mistake was actually a wonderful metaphor for life: We can’t always control the first bad event, but we are in control of how we let it impact us going forward….
If we attach ourselves to the pain of the first arrow, continue to think all of the negative thoughts it brought about, repeat the patterns of our past, dwell in the pain, and bemoan our bad luck, we send the second arrow hurtling straight into our open wound.
If we pause, breathe, give ourselves a moment to reset, and choose a balanced response, we send the second arrow falling feebly to the ground- Excerpt from Sahil Bloom’s Curiosity Chronicles.
There’s so much gem in that particular article and if you are struggling with healing from a betrayal or even just a negative event, reading it can propel you on the journey to healing.
But the point I am trying to make with that excerpt is this- forgiveness is within your power. You can chose to forgive and heal. And contrary to mainstream belief, I disagree with the ‘forgive & forget’ philosophy. I think it’s impractical. If you can forgive and forget then by all means please do that, but as someone who’s empathetic and sensitive, I struggle to forget. I always remember but not for vindictive purposes.
I have a rating system which I apply to people in my life. If you are in my corner then I automatically rate you high as default. The first time you betray my trust, maybe not in a knee jerking way, something that can be redeemable but still served to erode trust, your rating drops. I first decide whether I can still call you my person with the facts presented before me. I weigh the enormity of the betrayal. If it is redeemable then forgive but your rating drops and if it is not, i still forgive but I remove you from my life. It doesn’t mean that we’ll no longer be on speaking terms but you have no access to me anymore. I always forgive because I believe unforgiveness is you walking around with an open sore. You hold a grudge in your heart, which depending on the severity of the offence, has the tendency to change you into a bitter person. I cannot give another person that much power over me, so I forgive. But the question becomes, do you remain in my life, still continue to exist in my space, still hold your place in my heart, or do I intentionally take you out, erect firm boundaries.
This is what I mean by forgive and forget being impractical. Because truly, if we were capable of forgiving and forgetting then we would operate as though the betrayal never happened. We would eliminate triggers. And worse of all, we wouldn’t have learnt from it. We would proceed to carry on as though nothing ever happened and I do not see the sense in that.
So like Sahil Bloom advised don’t allow the fallacy of the compound mistake apply to you. You might not have been able to control the first arrow-betrayal, but you can control the second- forgiveness. Forgive past hurt. Forgive yourself for self betrayal and heal. Holding on to a grudge does not serve you in the grand scheme of things. More often than not, the perpetrator might have moved on and forgotten their offence yet you walk around hurting and breaking still.
Forgiveness is for you, not for the other person. I say this with utmost empathy. Forgive and begin your healing journey, today.🫶🏾
