Letting things go

as we forgive those who tresspass against us

I’m pretty good at moving on. I think it is an incredibly valuable life skill. Wasting time and energy on unwinnable fights is something I have trained myself not to do.

Whenever I am vexed, I try to answer four questions:

1. what is the problem?
2. what do I want to happen?
3. how likely is that?
4. is it worth the time and effort?

Most of the time, the answers don’t line up so I close the issue in my mind and move on.

This usually works.

Usually.

(being good at answering those questions is key if you want to get compensation from a company, and I’m pretty good at getting compensation from companies when the answers line up)

Two things I haven’t been able to let go

There are two things I am still angry about. Both concern money but money is not the reason I feel wronged.

I understand that there is nothing I can do to change them, but from time to time I remember them and I get angry and upset again. I go through my questions and my intellect tells me there is nothing I an do but I have not been able to move on. A few weeks or months later something will remind me and I will get upset again.

(I’m actually writing this article to try and get rid of them. We’ll see if it works)

An ill-thought out investment

The first thing was an investment I made in a startup company run by a few friends and acquaintances in 2011, just a few months after the earthquake. I am not going to name it but if there are any people reading who invested in it (apparently there were a couple of dozen of us) I’m sure you will recognise it.

The company was in a field I was familiar with, run by people I knew and trusted. It was offering 1% of the company for 6,000 USD. I bought 2% as I was excited about the sales pitch they sent me with money my wife and I had saved up.

Apparently they sold 50% of the company to small investors (mainly people they knew, like me) and then started developing their products. They had some issues with quality control etc. I was involved in testing and gave a lot of feedback.

They missed the first dividend. Then the second. And things just got worse from there.

Not replying to emails, making excuses as to why they weren’t sharing financial information, etc.

In 2019 they decided they were now a ‘social enterprise’ instead of a business.

After three years of silence and multiple email asking for updates, they sent out a final letter explaining that the company had been reorganised as an LLC in the US owned by one of the founders.

Now, I am at peace with the fact that investing in a friend’s startup is generally a very bad idea, and there is a low probability of getting your money back at all, let alone making more.

I’m also at peace with losing 12,000 USD (in 2011! Had I instead put it into the stockmarket it would now be worth… around 3 million yen).

No, the reason I am still angry and upset about this is because I feel personally wronged. I trusted the people I invested with, and (perhaps understandably, I can empathise to a certain extent) they ghosted me and tried to pretend that it never happened.

And I would never have done that. If someone trusted me with their money, I would at the very least have communicated with them, if not done everything possible to pay them back or make it right somehow.

It was the betrayal that hurt, not the money.

And in a way if the company had just been shut down I might have felt better. Seeing it still operating and the people involved promoting it on social media leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Bait and switch charity

The second thing involved the private school I graduated from in the UK (Oundle School). Like all private schools, they depend on alumni donations to fund projects and I would regularly receive letters and emails about it and regularly file them in the bin.

But in 2018 my brother died.

And shortly afterwards I got a letter from the school about their latest fundraising project. It was to build a new sports grounds (my brother was a skilled athlete and represented the school in several sports) and donors would get to sponsor a tree and get a plaque displayed near their tree.

I donated the required amount (1,000 pounds) and the school charity director agreed to reserve a plaque in a prominent place for my brother’s name. I thought his friends might see it from time to time and remember him. It seemed a fitting tribute.

Then about a year later I received a letter from the school thanking me for my contribution and explaining that they would not be assigning trees or making plaques, but instead had decided to commission an abstract sculpture to honor donors collectively instead.

This hurt much worse than the investment. Still does.

It’s not the money (although I came very close to calling the school and asking them to give it back). Not at all.

It’s the way it feels like they took away my brother’s memorial. Seems kind of silly because it never existed in the first place, but it existed in my head. I put a lot of thought into it and it brought me some small measure of comfort that he would be remembered in a place he’d loved and been a part of.

And I understand intellectually that some committee probably made what was to them a minor decision. There was no malice involved, just a degree of thoughtlessness.

But even now just writing about it had me in tears.

Time to let go

I’ve been letting these things fester inside me for too long now. Both are effectively over, and there is nothing I can realistically do to change them now.

It is very much the case that I should make my peace with them, not for their sakes, but for mine.

Being angry and upset isn’t healthy.

I can’t change what happened, but I can change how I think about it from now on.

I’m not at all religious, but I find a lot of value in religions. Particularly the line about forgiving trespasses from the Lord’s Prayer, and the quote above about anger.

So I am going to move on. I am not going to forget, and I certainly won’t be giving a penny to Oundle School ever again, but I will try to forgive and let go of my anger.

How about you? Do you have anything you should be letting go of?