How do we free ourselves of grudges?
How do we forgive those who’ve wronged us, when they really hurt us?
The Torah says that we should forgive, but is such a thing humanly possible?
A famous Chassid once asked, “Every night, we say in the bedtime prayer ‘I forgive all those who’ve offended me’ but how could we say such thing? Not ‘how can we forgive?’ but ‘how can we be so arrogant that we need to forgive?’ How could we feel like we need to grant somebody our forgiveness every single night?? Are we so sensitive that we can’t go through a day without feeling insulted??”
Similarly, when a Chassid complained to the Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, that “when i’m in the synagogue, people are always stepping all over me,” the Tzemach Tzedek told him “you spread yourself all over the synagogue, nobody can step anywhere else!” In other words, “You get offended so easily because your ego is out of control!”
We can learn to not get insulted, and then need to forgive people, by recognizing that whatever happens to us, every insult, every slight, every disappointment, is our destiny. No human being is capable of interfering with another’s destiny. Nobody controls our destiny other than God. When we get hurt, its coming from God, the human being who delivered the pain is just that: a delivery man, a messenger. So don’t shoot the messenger.
Its nonsense to say that someone “ruined my life.” Its not possible. Whatever happens to us is our life the way it was meant to be.
This is what Joseph told his brothers: “Don’t be afraid, for am I instead of God? Indeed, you intended evil against me, [but] God designed it for good”
