A classic strategy to bond with a new friend is to trash your old friends; this can come up organically in conversation. While reflecting on past experiences and sharing stories from the high school or college days, you always end up telling one that involves someone you have not spoken to in years.
How do you present that? It usually falls into the category of, “my ex-best friend,” to which your new friend says, “I have one of those too!” and you proceed to connect over something that happened years ago that you still care way too much about.
I have learned a lot of things in my short life, and one of those is that our generation takes the past into account and holds grudges. We try to move on from things that people have done- maybe even before we knew them- but it always factors into how we feel about them later in life. I am guilty of this, but I also recognize that there are times when we should move on, and maybe let those who screwed us over move on as well.
So, you tell your new Friend X about your old Friend Y. You tell Friend X about the time that Friend Y did not invite you to hang out with her and a bunch of your other friends, and how that was the final straw in your drama-filled high school friendship. Friend X relates to this- something very similar happened to her back in the day, and she has not spoken to her former friend in over five years. You and Friend X are officially tight.
A couple of weeks later, Friend X meets her new coworker and recognizes the name…it is Friend Y. Friend X is predisposed to dislike her, based on her knowledge of not inviting you to hang out five years ago.
And here is the problem:
Maybe five years ago Friend X was a b*tch. Should she have to carry that weight for the rest of her life? I mean, as the friend she was a b*tch to, I would say yes. If I were Friend X, I would obviously say no. But, reflecting on the severity of what occurred, I think I can reasonably conclude that it really should not matter to Friend Y what Friend X did to me back in the day. She did not physically assault me; she hurt my feelings. I can move past that.
What about the girl who accidentally posted a nude picture on Facebook three years ago? When you think about reconnecting with her because you just moved to the same city, do you have to take that into account? She screwed up because she was young, dumb, and not technologically savvy. She deserves a second chance, without everyone judging her.
We just can’t let go of the past. We don’t want to. It’s easier to hold a grudge and cut someone out of our lives than confront what happened and deal with it. It’s easier to keep talking trash about them, tell everyone what they did, and twist what you know to present yourself in a better light.
We all make really stupid decisions. I do think that some actions can help to define a person, but not every choice is so life-changing that it should influence us forever. When we are young, we are selfish. It is just part of the deal.
We put ourselves first, live in the moment, and forget that our decisions impact others. It does not make mistakes okay, but it does make them mistakes. We learn, we move on, and we hope that others allow us to move on. The background on my phone is a quote (yeah, I’m one of those) that captures every point I’m trying to get across into one sentence:
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Do our youthful mistakes make us shitty people? Not necessarily. Let’s not let things that others have done to us in the past hold us back from moving on and living life. And while we’re at it, let’s not hold them back from doing the same.
