The small hurts that others cause us can often sting more than the big ones. This is usually because those who hurt us badly tend to be removed from our lives.
In contrast, those who hurt us in small, thoughtless ways are usually those closest to us: our friends, partners, and family members.
Even though their hurtful actions might have been unintentional, their constant presence reminds us of what occurred — like having a sunburn poked repeatedly.
The easiest way to move past that sting is to forgive them, and here’s why it’s best to do it sooner rather than later:
1. We all hurt others sometimes because we’re all still figuring it out.
I don’t know about you, but I can remember several times when I’ve hurt others because I was still figuring out interpersonal dynamics.
We often have the expectation that by the time a person reaches adulthood, they should know exactly what to do in every circumstance or interaction.
In reality, life is a constant journey of personal evolution, and that includes figuring out how to behave in various situations.
As such, we’re all going to mess up at times.
We may hurt others because we reacted poorly when we were tired or in pain, or because we used an expression that we meant one way but came out differently than intended.
It’s important to keep this in mind when it comes to forgiving others in turn. There’s no specific age at which people’s social skills are above reproach or universally understood, and that includes our own.
2. A bad day does not make a bad person.
We all know that we aren’t at our best when we’re having a bad day.
Most of us have experienced situations where we haven’t had decent sleep for a while, work is stressful, something broke at home that needs repairing (or costly replacement), and all our nerves seem to be frayed.
Then something will push us over the edge, and we’ll snap at someone even though they didn’t really deserve quite so much of our vitriol.
Yes, we should all do the work to learn how to better regulate our emotions, but just because you might have reacted poorly when you were at your wits’ end, that doesn’t make you a complete jerk.
You had a bad day, and had a very human moment in which your difficult emotions got the better of you. The same goes for everyone else on the planet.
3. What they said isn’t necessarily what you heard.
A lot of disagreements and hurt feelings are caused by misinterpretation.
Basically, a person might say something with the intention of expressing one idea, but the individual they’re talking to will take it completely differently than intended.
This often happens because of differences in communication style that arise from upbringing, culture, personality, or neurotype.
Without a good understanding (and acceptance) of different communication styles, misunderstandings can be rife, and are some of the most common reasons why people end up getting hurt when no offense was intended.
One example that comes to mind is how curvy Missouri morning news anchor Carissa Codel was called “thicker than zoo glass” by a viewer (and went viral for reading the viewer comments about her body in her anchor voice).
Many people interpreted this as a trolling comment that insulted her full figure. However, other commenters (and Clarissa herself) noted that in AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), that was actually a massive compliment for curvy individuals.
Another example might be when a neurodivergent person, such as someone who is autistic, speaks directly, without what they see as unnecessary filler talk. To a neurotypical person, this might be misinterpreted as rudeness because to them, social pleasantries and more indirect communication is the norm.
Remembering that no communication style is wrong, right, superior, or inferior allows us to have a bit more understanding and compassion when we are unintentionally hurt by someone’s words.
4. They may not realize that their “normal” is hurtful to you.
People who were raised with certain dynamics generally grow up to assume that those behaviors are normal.
It doesn’t occur to them that other people had different experiences from their own, and may interpret those behaviors differently.
For instance, let’s say a person was raised alongside several siblings where playful insults and mischief were the family love language.
When they grew up and started dating, however, they found that such behavior was taken poorly by the people they were romantically involved with.
They might have inadvertently hurt those close to them deeply because they felt that they were being playful, but their good-spirited roasting was taken as hurtful insults instead.
Once they’ve realized this, they can make amends and learn who not to roast, but equally, understanding why they behaved this way in the first place allows the individual on the receiving end to forgive them sooner and move on.
5. Holding onto anger and resentment only hurts you in the long run.
I have often said that holding onto anger and resentment is like gripping tightly to a smoldering coal.
Why? Because doing so isn’t hurting anyone else, but it will keep causing you pain as long as you hold onto it. Furthermore, while you’re focused on the ache in your hand, you can’t feel much of anything else.
Love, joy, and all those other positive emotions fade into the background, or get downright ignored because the pain is at the forefront.
The second you let go and drop that coal, you’ll start to heal. There will be some residual discomfort, and you may end up with a scar, but the pain will keep lessening every minute.
There’s no benefit to remaining focused on the negativity you experienced when there’s so much beauty to experience instead.
6. There are likely far more reasons to keep this person in your life than to cut them from it or let grudge-holding destroy the relationship.
In our contemporary consumerist culture, many people treat others as inherently replaceable.
They shop for partners online and replace them when they turn out to not be exactly what they wanted. Similarly, if they have arguments with close friends, they’ll just ghost them and replace them as well.
Later, however, they’ll miss these people terribly and want them back in their lives, but usually too much damage and distance have occurred for that to happen.
This is why it’s so important to mend issues as soon as they arise, and then forgive and move on, rather than letting those holes get bigger and bigger.
If you’ve been close to this person for a while, it’s for a reason. They’re special enough to you that you’ve put real time and effort into them, and they play an important role in your world.
Don’t throw that away or let resentment destroy it from the inside out.
7. In the grand scheme of things, petty grievances aren’t that big a deal.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to invalidate your experience. If you were hurt by something a person said or did, then how you feel about what happened is completely valid.
The key here is to recognize that yes, it was a crap thing to go through, but it isn’t worth holding onto.
Quite simply, with everything else that’s going on in the world, and everything you’ll experience in the future, a small, thoughtless action from someone that hurt you temporarily isn’t that big a deal.
It’s rather like a person who experiences discomfort from an ingrown toenail for a while and fixates on how awful that is. Then they get T-boned in an intersection and end up with a dozen broken bones and several reconstructive surgeries.
In retrospect, that toenail discomfort was nothing in comparison to the car wreck.
Such is life in general: we’re all going to experience rather harrowing things over the course of our lives, so there’s really no point in holding onto small grievances when they could be forgiven and moved past.
They were difficult at the time, yes, but that time has passed.
8. You would want to be forgiven quickly if the roles were reversed.
The more we care about a person, the less we want to inflict any kind of suffering onto them.
As a result, when we do cause them harm thoughtlessly and unintentionally, we’ve usually felt immense regret for having done so, and we hope to be forgiven quickly so we can make amends as best we can.
Remembering what it felt like to be in that situation can be immensely helpful and humbling when it comes to forgiving others in turn.
9. We never know how long any of us have.
While we’d love to think that we all have decades ahead of us, the reality is that we never know how much time any of us have left.
Most of us have lost people unexpectedly, with countless things left unsaid. For example, I lost a dear friend to cancer a few years ago. We had been very close when we were younger, but grew apart due to some things she had said that created distance between us.
Not only do I miss her terribly, but I often wonder how much more time we could have spent together if we had addressed the hurt that had been caused.
Even though the hurt hadn’t been intentional, it was enough that I drew away rather than discussing it, because that approach had been easier at the time. That issue will never be resolved now, and I’ll never see my friend again.
Don’t let that be you.
Final thoughts…
In many spiritual traditions, forgiveness isn’t just about showing compassion and understanding to the one who hurt you: it also frees you from the effect that action caused.
If you’re feeling angry or upset because of a thoughtless thing someone did to hurt you, take some time to analyze what that anger and resentment is doing to your heart and your mind, right now. Then decide whether you wish to keep on carrying those emotions, or release them so you can heal and move on.
You’ll feel much better if you do.
