When I first moved down to San Marcos to go to college I lived on the campus of Southwest Texas State University. I took a job with the University Police Department as a way to supplement my income. Among my duties were writing parking citations and operating one of the booths that approached the campus. Much of the university was on a hill, and the duties of the police guard at the booth was directing traffic.
One of the things I was responsible for as a booth officer was to tell students that they were not allowed to drop off passengers up on the hill. They had to disembark at the booth and walk. Mostly it appears that this was to keep the hill clear for the various commuter buses that came from out of town. Also, the only parking spaces that were past the booth were "restricted" meaning only faculty could use them.
I took my job seriously, and sometimes even a little too seriously. One person in particular that I had a run in with constantly was a woman who would try to speed past the booth to avoid having to abide by the university rules. My interactions with this woman led her to apparently file a complaint that I was "harassing" her (when in reality, all I was doing was enforcing the rules). Nothing came of it during my tenure but it did play a part in a later episode in my life.
After I had left the university in 1989, I took a job stocking groceries at a local grocery store overnight. At one point, the university received some complaints that someone was making obscene phone calls to one of the girls dormitories. Initially the phone company told the University Police that the calls were coming from the grocery store where I worked.
The woman who was in charge of the University Police at the time called me up for a talk. At the time I knew nothing about the harassing phone calls; I assumed I was being called in for an interview for an open full-time position on the staff. Only, when I got there this woman made every effort she could to get me to "admit" that I was the guilty phone harasser. Despite my insistent I was not guilty we parted ways with her still thinking I was the guilty party. Later the phone company admitted they had made a mistake. All of us on the grocery stocking crew received a letter of apology from the phone company (although I was the only one who had been accused by the University representative).
I never received any kind of apology from the woman at the Police department however. For something like 20 years I refused to let it go. I never saw the woman again or confronted her about it, but I held on to that resentment, often playing over the scene in my mind, sometimes with less than conciliatory responses to her questioning.
In 2009 I entered the recovery program I have mentioned several times in this blog. Among the steps towards a more reasonable attitude towards life was one in which I listed a list of grievances that I had garnered over the years, and she was the first one I wrote down. Letting go of these resentments, by praying for a right attitude and realizing what my part in the resentment had been was part of the process. I realized I had created that situation primarily because of my attitude towards the people I had interacted with during that job as a student police officer. If I had been more of a model citizen during those two years I doubt that the university police representative would have even paused when she saw my name among the list of grocery employees.
Forgiveness is a quality that took some years to cultivate. Sometimes it is easy. I don't even recall any of the times I lent people money who promised to pay it back but never did. I know there were plenty of times, I just never let it bother me. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I never lent anything I couldn't afford to do without in the first place, but it still has an essence of forgiveness that I could just let it go.
On the other hand, I also took things a bit too personally, especially when people didn't measure up to my standards of how people should be. Lending money was one thing, but stiffing me on a bet was an entirely different matter. I would never have said "We didn't have a bet" to get out of paying a bet, but it did happen to me on several occasions. These, too, caused some serious dampers in relationships, and these too were things that I needed to let go of during the recovery process.
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" is familiar to anyone who has a familiarity with what is called "The Lord's Prayer". When it comes to spirituality, forgiveness is a two-way street. We can ask God to forgive us when we make mistakes, but God expects us to do likewise with those with whom we interact on a daily basis.
Likewise, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" comes up commonly. And that sentiment is not restricted to just the Christian tradition. A Buddhist axiom: "Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do to others." Islamic ideal: "None of you will believe until you love for your brother what you love for yourself." No matter which religion or spiritual tradition you follow, there is, somewhere in their spiritual texts, something along those lines.
But when "the Golden Rule" is thrown out the window and someone does something to us that is unacceptable to us, it behooves us to take a step back and look at it from a different perspective. Resentments can cause not only undue hardships in our relationships, but they can also cause severe emotional and even physical damage to ourselves. I often say that the worst"hangover" I ever got was not as a result of having too much to drink the night before. It was because I dwelt too long ruminating over a situation that did not proceed the way I would have wanted it to.
When I finally forgave the university police woman in my own mind, my life became much better, both spiritually and physically. Not only did I get rid of that nagging emotional hangover, I also began to feel better physically because I wasn't getting run down and tired from reliving the bad moment. I feel much better when I forgive and forget than I do when I retain and rehash them.
May your spiritual journey be fruitful.
Quiggy
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