What’s something you’ve forgiven but haven’t forgotten?
I forgave it. I didn’t forget it.
Those are two different jobs, and I learned that on a roof before I learned it anywhere else.
Forgiveness is deciding to put the ladder down. Forgetting would be climbing back up the same ladder the same way and expecting a different roof.
A pipe boot fails, and water gets in, and the ceiling stains. I can forgive the boot. It did its job for fifteen years in Georgia heat before it gave up. I can forgive the rain, too. Rain is just doing what rain does. But I don’t forget the boot. Every roof I walk after that one, I check the boots first, because the lesson is worth more than the grudge. The grudge doesn’t keep water out. The lesson does.
That’s how it works in the business, too. I’ve had invoices sit unpaid long enough to teach me something. I forgave those. Not in some big noble way — I just stopped carrying them around. Stopped rehearsing the phone call in the truck on the way home. Carrying it was costing me more than the money was.
But I didn’t forget. The terms changed. Deposits up front. Everything in writing. No more handshake jobs with people I just met. Forgiveness didn’t mean the same terms. Forgiveness meant I stopped paying interest on somebody else’s debt, and the new terms meant I stopped handing out the same loan.
Does it last? A grudge lasts exactly as long as you feed it, and it eats better than you do. What does it cost when it doesn’t? Everything you were trying to build while you were busy being right.
The hardest one to forgive was myself, and that’s the one I still haven’t forgotten, either. I spent six years working for other people, telling myself I’d go out on my own when the timing was right. The timing was never right. There was always a reason to wait one more season — the truck needed tires, the kids were small, the work was steady where I was. I forgave the younger man who kept waiting. He was doing his best with what he knew. But I didn’t forget what waiting cost, and that’s why I don’t wait the same way now. When something needs doing, I do it while it’s small, while it’s cheap, while I still have a choice about it.
People think forgiving means forgetting. It doesn’t. Forgetting is how you end up on the same roof with the same leak, wondering why the ceiling is stained again.
I can forgive just about anything once.
What I can’t do is forget what it taught me. The memory is the receipt. I keep the receipt.
I keep the longer, more personal writing over at andrewgoodrick.org.
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