I walked my son to school one day, and on the way he told me something that really struck me. He told me of a boy at school who was mad at him for something my son hadn’t even done. The boy said something that was untrue, and while we were talking, the boy was standing there. In that moment, to my surprise, my son said that he wanted to go and talk to the boy. So I asked him what else he wanted to say. What surprised me most in his response was this: “I want to say sorry.”
At first I didn’t get it. Why would he say he was sorry to someone who had falsely accused him? But then my son said something that made me pause and think. He wasn’t saying he was sorry for what he said he did but that he was sorry the boy felt hurt, just sorry there was misunderstanding. He wanted to validate the little boy’s pain, even if it wasn’t his fault. In that single act of compassion, my son demonstrated an undeniable truth: Children, at least at their truest, do not bear grudges.
They tussle, they squabble, then on a new day, they’re playing together once more, as though nothing occurred. It sprinkled me with how we carry on all this baggage as we age. We carry old wounds, criticism, and arguments like baggage that too often keeps us from making progress. It’s easy to get stuck in these negative emotions, thinking that they have purpose, but they just weigh us down.
What really hit home is how quickly kids move on from things that appear huge at the time. They don’t brood over disagreements or allow them to ruin their day. They forgive and forget swiftly and then hug those nearby. This seems beautiful, but as adults we forget that. We are likely to bear grudges, to criticize and to keep a tally of every hurt that is done to us. We think we have power or justification in holding on to these feelings, but really they do nothing but keep us stuck, preventing us from being at peace and happy.
We tell children about the power of forgiveness, but as adults, we have a hard time doing it ourselves. We become rigid in our beliefs, our pride, and our egos. But the truth is, most of the things we bicker over in adulthood are, in the long run, frivolous. Resentments, perpetual arguments, and hatred don’t change the past, nor do they make the future better.
It only stops us from healing and moving forward.” If only adults could view the world from a child’s perspective, where forgiveness isn’t about pride or ego, it’s about keeping the peace and understanding. Perhaps the most useless thing to waste in life is to keep ourselves trapped in negativity, resentment, and conflict.
At the moment, it can feel justified to apologies, but at the end, it hardly affects our peace of mind and separates us from others. We could use a refresher on the lessons kids learn instinctively: Forget past slights, live in the moment and work toward peaceful coexistence.
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