I was sitting at the table the other day and the phrase “good things take time” came in my head. I’m learning a lot about patience these days, so I can understand why this kept replaying in my mind over and over like a mantra. There’s one area in my life that it applies to in the best way, and that’s the area of conflict resolution. Most people think that I’m heartless and unforgiving when I fall out with people, but it’s rarely the case. I take time to process things that require me to apologize and forgive accordingly. The main reason I’m a ghoster is because I’m a firm believer that karma in the way that we know it, is rooted in victimhood.
Rather than focusing on the reason why something happened to me, I would rather lean into my own personal healing, which can be upsetting to someone wanting you to stay rooted in the conflict. People think sticking around equates to caring, but anyone who genuinely loves peace of mind, wouldn’t stay stuck in chaos to prove their loyalty (especially to someone they aren’t in agreement with). Understand that I am not perfect, and there are times when I have to remind myself that I’m not being punished for something not going well because of a poor decision made my someone else or me.
Karma is cause and effect, not “what goes around comes around.” It’s easy to believe that someone’s life is in shambles because they betrayed you days, months, years ago, but the reality is that their life is in shambles because of series of decisions that they made. For example, a person is broke because they aren’t good with money, not because they stole money from you in middle school. It’s important to note, that some people are put into your life to teach you lessons. The results of the lessons aren’t to punish you, they are designed to force you to advocate for yourself more, love yourself more, trust your own judgment more, prioritize areas of your life you neglected when that person entered more, etc. The more you consider that point of view (rather than the hurt), the faster you’ll be able to move forward.
I also want to note that people aren’t 100% inherently bad. When you sit around for months waiting on someone to fail, you don’t consider other areas in their life they may have grown in. They may have been an awful friend/husband/girlfriend to you, but they may have been a great employee. Although you may be in separation, that person is still deserving of anything they may have worked on. So they may get a bomb ass raise or a cool ass award while you two aren’t speaking and that’s fine. It’s easy to see someone seemingly progress, and use that as a indicator that you may have been right or wrong about your conflict. Understand things aren’t that black and white, and one situation has nothing to do with the other. Again, this isn’t anything personal and you’ll be bitter considering it in that way. Go use your time to heal.
I think we also underestimate the lengths that people will take to prove us wrong rather than apologizing. People who have done you wrong, will maintain relationships and behaviors for YEARS because they’d hate to admit people were right about something. I think it’s fair to not judge them, as I’m learning some people care about their image more than others, and although we can’t see or witness it personally, they take some emotional, financial, physical hits being this way. This is another one of those things that isn’t personal. Go use your time to heal.
Last point that I want to make is that we may be the bad guy in someone’s story, and that’s okay because we’re imperfect people. But with being the bad guy, we’d like some grace. We’d hate the idea that someone is sitting on the sidelines waiting for our demise. We’d like and require the same about of forgiveness if put in a situation where we’re the person that was wrong. I had this relationship in college where I cheated, mainly because I wasn’t honest enough to admit that I was never ready to date. When the relationship ended, I would always be worried someone would cheat on me. It never happened, and in my relationships to follow they ended for reasons less heartbreaking than infidelity.
I would go on to live my life and there were moments where I felt like my ex would do these gut checks or question me to see if I ever fell off because of some bogus ass decisions I made at 19. Understand life dealt with me, not because of my act in betrayal in that particular relationship. Years later, I still deal with commitment issues because of decisions I made, which brings me back to my very first point: karma is cause and effect, action and result, grace and then no grace over time.
Humans love to make things about them, unless you’re just super selfless, it’s easy to fall under the line of thinking that we actively had a hand in someone’s life lesson. It’s the biggest waste of time/thinking you could ever do. Everyone is forever learning, if it didn’t happen with you, they’ll learn with someone else. For the last and final time, this isn’t personal. Go use your time to heal.
