 photo © 2008 A of DooM | more info (via: Wylio)
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. This week's was really more regional in nature, so I thought I'd scour the archives for another one to print you probably haven't read. Here's an oldie but a goodie:
Recently we received a ticket in the mail from the Toronto Parking Authority. It seems we parked one evening at midnight in a no-parking zone, and we owed them $40. There was just one minor detail they overlooked. It wasn’t us. Sure, that was our license plate on the ticket, but we were nowhere near Toronto that night. My husband was working in the Emergency Room, and I was home with the kids two hundred kilometres away. No problem, I thought. I’ll just clear this all up.
That was easier said than done. There was no email address on the ticket, just a regular phone number (not even toll free) to phone during business hours. The only other way to deal with it was to go in person. So I phoned. It was busy. I tried for three days. And then, miraculously, I got an answer. “You are number 24 in line. Your wait will likely be 38 minutes.” So I waited. And waited. Number 17. Number 8. Number 3. And finally, number 1. And as I was being transferred, I heard—a busy signal. I had been disconnected.
In desperation, I called some traffic ticket specialists, figuring they could help me. They told me that if I didn’t pay the ticket on time, the authorities would double the fine, and it would cost me more than $40 to fight it. I could take them to small claims court, they explained, but again, it would cost me more than the price of the ticket. I may as well just pay it. “But it wasn’t me!” I told her. “It’s the principle of the thing!” She told me she understood, but there was nothing I could do.
How could the government just do this to me? I was really steamed. I told everyone my story, and actually found other people who had received similar tickets. “What did you do?” I asked. “We paid.” they said. “We could never get through on that phone number.”
So after a week of worrying about this, doing little else, I finally realized there was no point. Sometimes you just have to let it go.
A lot of life is like that. We choose to hold on to our grudges, because it’s the principle of the thing. Bitterness, though, doesn’t pay very good dividends. Someone once said that anger is like a poison that you take yourself. It doesn’t do anything to the person you’re angry at, but it hurts you. You go through life always testing, always suspicious, and never at peace.
Letting go isn’t easy, but it’s a lot better than driving yourself nuts. I could have fought that ticket on principle, but it would have cost me more. Bitterness often costs us more than forgiving would, even if forgiving doesn’t seem fair. Forgiveness, of course, doesn’t mean that we ignore problems or subject ourselves or our kids to harm. It just means that we choose not to let those problems consume so much of our emotional energy. We let the anger go so we can enjoy the rest of life. Dwelling on such problems and seeking revenge, even if only in your head, only hurts you. You spend your life with such negativity that you don’t even notice to see the good around you.
I know someone whose wife left him for someone else. It wasn’t a pretty situation. It certainly wasn’t fair. This man, though, now uses his kids to get back at her. He won’t buy them clothes, school supplies, or toys. He tries to minimize his child support payments as much as possible so she has very little money to live on so that she can’t spend on herself. He’s punishing her, he thinks, but really he’s hurting his kids and himself in the process. He’s losing out on his relationship with his children because he’s still so hurt over her.
She did betray him. She did hurt him. But sometimes you have to let it go. It isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always pretty. Chances are, though, that life will be much easier on the other side. The principle of the thing isn’t always worth it. People are. Sometimes that’s hard to swallow, but it’s the best medicine there is.
After finishing this column, I gave that phone number one last try. To my amazement I got through, and they cancelled the ticket immediately. It felt great, but not nearly as wonderful as giving up that anger in the first place.
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Stumble It!
While as Christians, we don't have the right to bitterness and revenge, like the man you described, something impersonal like the wrongfully charged ticket costing $40 (a clerical error) is a lot easier to *let go* than your wife running off with somebody else (adultery). All things are not the same. This man needs some sort of counseling or something to be able to get over this kind of bitterness and revenge; that's really sad. It is the type of thing that requires true repentance (which will probably not be forthcoming) before real Biblical forgiveness can take place. I don't think you can compare the two situations. You can't make adultery as trivial as a wrong ticket and expect it to be gotten over as easily.