[2066] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: past mistakes
dkk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dkk@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Apr 22 02:16:54 1991
Julie wrote:
> he said that it must have been something that i had done a year ago.
> i had put that behind me. i thought he had too. apparently not.
Perhaps I can help you understand his perspective by playing slapper's
advocate...
A personal offense is worse than a mistake which causes some
difficulty (but not hurt feelings). A betrayal is worse than a
personal offense. In any case, an apology helps put the mistake
behind you both.
If I felt you (the generic "you") caused me a problem by making a
(non-offensive) mistake, I would presumably have forgotten or forgiven
it long ago.
If I was offended, even if you didn't apologize, I probably would have
forgotten/forgiven it by now.
However, I have a much longer memory for betrayals (as do most people,
I think). You don't necessarily know when you've betrayed someone's
trust, because you don't necessarily know when he trusts you.
Betrayals hurt a lot more than ordinary insults. Perhaps the
face-slapper felt that he was among "family" of sorts, and you kidded
him about the wrong thing at the wrong time?
Here's one incident in which the two people involved had very
different views of what happened:
When I went to the Soviet Union with a tour group in 1988, about
half-way (I think) through a 3+ week tour, one of the two other young
people in the group offered me some gum, which I accepted. This was
while we were flying Aeroflot. I took the gum out of politeness, not
because I really wanted it. My hotel-room-mate gave away the fact
that something odd was going on, which he only suspected. The woman
who had given me the gum then laughed and told me that it was Ex-Lax.
She asked, later, "You didn't take that seriously, did you?" I just
answered "I take everything seriously." She actually expected me to
laugh off being poisoned by a comrade. (Please excuse the choice of
word...) Many other people would probably also have thought me wrong
for taking her deception as a betrayal, rather than good fun.
Was I wrong? I don't think so. And I did forgive her after about a
week.
I know your (Julie's) situation was probably not so extreme, but
considering how easily you can be hurt/affected by the subtle actions
of others, you should probably give other people some more lee-way,
too. Better to apologize when you still feel OK than to get a slap in
the face when you're feeling down...
For what it's worth, I've done a lot of things that I'd rather have
everyone forget. Most of them have been forgotten, but perhaps some
will come back at an akward time. (I'm glad *I'm* not running for
Congress...) I feel stronger now that I can laugh at most of them,
rather than being haunted by them.
