The resentment keeps us tied to the one who offended us. Reconciliation, on the contrary, allows you to let go of that burden and flow with life again.
Living consists, to a large extent, of learning to manage distances. Thanks to the distance, to the fact that there is a space and borders between beings and things, we distinguish ourselves from each other, we exist as individuals conscious of being so and not as a formless mass, and we have the perspective to know ourselves better then others now.
Living, therefore, is knowing how to map the distances that mean something to you (the distance between your partner, your children, your partners, your multiple selves, with possible ideologies, with other customs, with other rhythms, with distant landscapes, with bygone eras, etc.) and conduct oneself trying not to blur that map.
But this, not blurring the map, not making mistakes when calculating speed and the opportunity to zoom in or out, is almost impossible. Sometimes, misinterpreting the indications of that map, one moves away when it should approach and approaches when it should move away, and also uses extemporaneous gestures and words to do so.
Most of the misunderstandings and anger produced between people who love each other or who, temporarily or habitually, collaborate in something, has to do with that misreading that has been made of the map of feelings, ideals, and beliefs. Objectives (love, professional) or circumstances.
And by betraying the map we betray others and we betray ourselves.
LEARN TO LEAVE THE GRUDGE BEHIND
It is precisely at that critical moment in which distances rebel and conspire against us (because those mistakes make us obtuse, disloyal, unfriendly, erratic, blind) when it is convenient to stop. Stopping to reconcile with the map that one is before it expels you from its coordinates and leaves you out in the open, lost, alone, unrelated.
Stopping, also, to give the other, that other from whom one has abruptly separated, the opportunity to stop and apply to his own map those instruments of high sentimental precision that are intuitions, emotions , common history or the good use of ethics and objectivity.
Once the two of you are stopped, reconciling is easy: just compare and reattach those personal maps; it is enough that any one of them asks to borrow the compass from the other and that this other, as if inadvertently, brushes his hand when passing it to him.
In order to reconcile, it is necessary to believe that this other, the one inside or the outside, is partly right.
A PERFECTED MAP
Reconciling yourself is an act of courage and common sense (and it is that to have common sense in a world like this that rambles so much you have to be very brave) because it puts our relationship with the other, the other and oneself to the test.
Because in order to reconcile it is necessary to believe that that other, the one from within or the one from the outside, has part of the reason, and not only of their reason, something that we take for granted, but also of our reason. The other often holds the key to who we are or what we need to be.
In fact, in the other there is, very often, the switch that turns on or off the light that we are or, if we want to express it this way, the light that inhabits us.
To reconcile is to trust that, in effect, the other has that key, or that switch, and to open up to recognize it, to accept it. Before, one has fought with that person over discrepancies, whatever they may be, that kept him away from her. Later it is time to get closer to check two things: that generally these discrepancies were more the result of the moment than the truth of the relationship, and that any discrepancy has a regenerative and positive power that, when used well, improves the relationship. People and improves relationships.
The one who reconciles once again has in his hands the map of his life in perfected conditions, since that act has cleaned up some of its signs and has clarified the details, the indications, of certain main or secondary roads.
THE UNIVERSE REGAINS ITS MEANING
To reconcile is to rejoin the separate. To reconcile is to feel again the essential unity that runs through all that is alive. When you reconcile, you return to the fabric that ties you to the Universe: to the stars, to the roots of trees, to rivers, to animals, to other human beings.
That is why it is a catastrophic act for two people to separate the hard way because not only does it put distance and disunity between them, but because it dislocates everything else (the stars, the roots, etc.) and puts it into question, that is, because it blurs and tears that map of maps that is the Universe.
To reconcile, then, is to trust again that everything, or everything, makes sense again. Not just her, not just him, not just yourself everything. And hold hands so that it does not fall apart, yes, the Universe.