Forgiveness; grudge , "thin line between love and hate"

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Have not been able to forgive:

Old man and old woman
Mister redelings and Amy shyu
Amy Lee scheel
Kayla feder and Rolando
Tattle tale tom and other idiot at work

"Thin line between love and hate"

I try not to love or hate too many things, too often, because love and hate make it easier to do something you regret doing. But as usual I am a failure

Have you forgiven people in the past? If so, how?

I think forgiveness is less black-and-white than a lot of stuff I've seen suggests it is.

For example, I like the phrase "I forgive but I won't forget." I looked it up some time ago and found this about it:
It suggests that someone has chosen to release the negative feelings tied to an offense (forgiveness), but they still remember what happened and may remain emotionally guarded or cautious about it in the future. It reflects a mix of emotional maturity, personal boundaries, and the lasting impact of certain experiences.

And if somebody seriously harms somebody, then those who love the harmed one often feel they'd be letting them down if they forgave the offender.

This notion that we should all forgive doesn't sit well with me. It's fine up to a point but beyond that I don't think we can or should.

Good topic.

Holding on to hate just hurts you more. Maybe try letting go little by little, just for your own peace

Unless you can wreak your revenge. Once I've kicked them back I usually find it easier to forgive. It's hard when you can't do that and get stuck in the same futile cycle of hating even though there's nowhere appropriate for it to go. It's common for humans to find a scapegoat instead, which is unfair. Sometimes inanimate objects can work. Whatever you do, don't take it out on yourself or on your property.

Some people ease the problem by stopping events similar to the one that hurt them. Like Spiderman wouldn't help to arrest a thief till the thief had killed his parents, then he spent the rest of his life bringing criminals to justice.

I don't trust this biblical idea that it's just a matter of absorbing the pain without some kind of counter-move to make you feel better.

I read a book once about forgiveness. It talked about mirror neurons and empathy a lot. If I remember correctly, the prescribed way to forgive someone is to put yourself in their position and understand why they would do what they did. It works for me a lot. I only get hung up now when I can't imagine any situation at all in which I would do what someone else did. In those cases, I mentally place those people into the monsters bin in my head and do my best to forget them while keeping the lessons they taught me.

I wouldn't want to wait till I was dead. Knowing my luck I'd just go out like a candle and not wake up as a ghost at all. Then I'd be disappointed. Plus it would be tedious waiting all that time to die.

According to popular definitions, revenge is much worse than retribution because revenge is supposed to be emotional and over the top, while retribution is supposed to be carefully thought out by the Great And Good who are completely impartial and make the punishment fit the crime. But I think I could be trusted not to go too ape with my revenge. It's probably enough for me to challenge people verbally and warn them, but it depends what they did. Those well-paid politicians who cut benefits and make them hard to get, I'd like to put them on benefits and see how they like it. Taste of own medicine.

I'm not the type to hold grudges. If someone has shown hostile behaviour towards me in the past but has gone out of their way to win back my respect simply because they want to move on and be friends again, then I forgive them without a second thought. If people just hold on to whatever disagreements we've had in the past, even after I've tried being civil to them and apologised or owned up to my errors, then I can't forgive them if they aren't willing to forgive me.

If anything, I "forget but don't forgive." Unless I have to deal with them on a daily basis, I am not going to give the barstewards the satisfaction of living in my head rent-free.

If someone is still out there actively causing harm in the world, forgiving them is just aiding and abetting them. There are certain public figures who I will continue to regard as utterly irredeemable subhuman scum until either they or I are in the grave.

Hating people takes energy. Unless someone has really committed a serious crime deliberately, like murder or sexual abuse or something, then that's not forgivable. But if it's just a disagreement you had, maybe an argument or some other sort of petty drama, then I don't see much point in spending the rest of my life holding grudges if they've apologised or whatever. I prefer to just forgive back and move on.

^
I agree there's no point hating if there's nothing can be done about them, but if there is, I think it might be nature's way of motivating people to stand up to bar stewards. But sure, petty offences are different. There's got to be give and take. I think there's a lot of stuff in between the two extremes, and it gets difficult to know quite what to do at the low-ish end of that.

Animals seem to get it right better than humans sometimes. They do threat displays first, and if that doesn't see the offender off they give them a poke, and only go for the jugular as a last resort. Of course that's a crude generalisation.