Spite may transform, but forgiveness sets us free

Lydia Lowery Busler

There's a lot to be said for spite...

Spite's been the impetus behind many a great accomplishment. We survive in spite of the odds. We work hard in school and get that degree because we were told we never would, told we couldn't, or were treated like "less". We do these things to prove our exes wrong, just in case they find out and to assure ourselves that they were wrong.

Communities and even countries have progressed on a great deal of spite. Think of the amount of times an American President, any one of them, has said, "We'll prove them wrong." Communities rally behind the spiteful spirit when the home team loses, gets harassed for it, and returns with a vengeance to win and to make sure no one sees them as weak again.

The truth is, for all of this progress, there's no joy in acting out of spite, regardless of the result. When we have a reason for spite, it signifies that we've experienced pain. And when we have pain, we need to transform the pain. Whether physical or emotional pain (which can be loss, rejection, loss of support, devaluing of dreams, penalties, bullying, abuse, neglect, failure), we need to give ourselves the space to heal and grow from the pain.

Yet the first thing we tend to do is to try to find a reason for the pain, and that brings us to a place of judgment. And this judgment is condoned on social media and the press! We hear so much more about "bad behavior" than about "good behavior", and we hear constantly about victimhood. We rarely look at what caused the pain of who hurt us, what caused the accident (if anything), and if we can't blame another, we blame ourselves.

As much as spite is a type of transformation, it is not a healing process. It is a shield, an armor. And shielding ourselves still bows to the pain, the blame, and the distrust. It's a process and it can be overwhelming, but if we don't go through that overwhelming process, we have that pain behind our armor in our triumph. There's no contentment in that, no satisfaction.

I've been blocked online. I bet you have, too. We may not realize it, but many block us, just as we block others. We could take the time to tell them why their spam won't work, right? But that's not our purpose, and we grow tired of being spammed. But maybe there's another reason for blocking - believing something someone else said, feeling like we're not heard on a day when maybe we weren't, or maybe we were just not feeling it because we had extra cortisol on the brain. Maybe we think someone is selfish, brash, or unkind. Yet if we don't keep them onboard, we won't see what value they give to others, or that they had a really bad day. We can't see what it is about them that triggers us and use the opportunity to heal. Blocking is self preservation, right? But it's also a form of spite. That's ok, just realize that blocking them won't help us heal if we need to do so.

Judging blinds us and disunifies us.

You see, we won't heal until we stop blaming the enemy, the meanies, the government, the doctor, our ex, the economy, the young, the elderly, our mother, those who speak differently from us or are distracted in different ways or have less education or have more. And we can't change them and it wouldn't heal us anyway. We are the ones we can transform. We can transform pain into power and contentment and harmony. 

Forgiveness allows us to move on and grow, and it may allow them to change, heal, and grow as well. But we're the only ones whose reaction we can transform.

We can only heal with an open heart.