You can still recite it

You say you've forgiven them. You can still recite what they said, word for word, from three years ago.

That's not hatred. Hatred gets tired. This is a sentence that never got filed and now shows up as evidence whenever you meet somebody new who reminds you of them.

Confucius was talking about two brothers, Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who refused to eat the grain of a new dynasty and starved on a mountain rather than compromise. He said of them that they didn't brood over old wrongs, and because of that resentment was rare.

Consider who he's praising. Those two men had the least reason in the world to be forgiving. Their entire reputation was built on refusing to let something go. And that's the pair Confucius says had stopped keeping accounts.

The thing that strikes me is the second half. Bu nian jiu e, yuan shi yi xi. The reward for not brooding wasn't that the other person suffered. It was that resentment became rare, in general, as a habit of mind.

Not forgiving is expensive in a way that has nothing to do with the other person. It costs you the ability to meet the next person without a case file already open.

You don't have to forgive anything tonight. Just stop using that sentence to explain the person in front of you.

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MOJOWAY is where I notice which old sentences are still doing time in my decisions. That noticing is the beginning of waking up, and it's the part of growth nobody can do for you.