01.05.03 The 1st Practice for Immunising Your Heart from Bitterness and Unforgiveness

1. Do not have Overly High Expectations of People

To ‘over-expect favours’ from people can make you prone to bitterness, thence enlisting you as a candidate of unforgiveness; as my friend Lameka once discovered.  Long time ago, his car broke down and had to be taken to the garage for a whole month.  Their two sons had just started preschool; and, of all times, at the beginning of the rainy season.  Lameka recounts how he and his wife Samali had ‘promised themselves’ that their wealthy brother Kasole would understandingly offer one of his four cars to the couple for use.  “After all, the vehicles were parked at Kasole’s home, with no one using them”, Lameka exclaims.  But despite several subtle hints to Kasole that his assistance was obligatory, the city tycoon had remained aloof.  Thence Lameka’s toddlers ended up suffering the torments of commuting to and from school each day; in humid, sweaty, passenger-stacked buses.  What a wake-up call that was!  During the weeks that followed, Lameka and Samali would discuss this over and over again; a tendency which only served to make them more and more bitter; converting a formerly deep relationship into one where the couple associated with Kasole at a distance.

Another story is that of Nakasi.  The first born of a family of four, her father had groomed her to sacrificially take care of her younger siblings, and not vice-versa.  Trouble came when the girl discovered that her siblings would constantly call each other, yet would never call her.  “But why is it always me to call them first?”, she would frequently complain to her husband, hurt that she had been segregated by her kin.  No doubt, my friend was not curved out for such obvious discrimination and favouritism from family quarters.  

The root of all these disappointments was unrealistically high expectations of people.  When you convince yourself that ‘so-and-so’ would never do ‘this or that’; you forget that the person is a mortal human being, bound to err.  In fact, such ‘let-downs’ are more disheartening when the so-called ‘offender’ is a close relative.  

Therefore, never make the mistake of naively swearing to yourself that simply because ‘blood is thicker than water’, your family folk will gladly wear your shoes, feeling the way you feel and sympathising the same way you would.  When you expect so much from people, you run the risk of being disillusioned should they fail to meet your standards.  Beware; such disappointments can easily graduate into bitterness and thence unforgiveness.