Take a breath, let it out slowly

I was going to write a light bit of fluff today about smiling and facial recognition software. But that will have to wait.
Instead, today's topic will be forgiveness.
Something happened to us this weekend that was...well...pretty bad. Imagine yourself writing job application letters for the first time in a couple of decades. Imagine that you messed up, ticked off a hiring manager and got a curt rejection.
Then imagine yourself seeing the text of that exchange--complete with your name--on display in someone's blog.
Yeah, that bad. But there's more. Imagine that wasn't enough humiliation to suit the blogger, so he dug up a cobwebby diatribe from someone who hates you with the intensity of an ex spouse, printed it, then invited followers to commence with the egg throwing. (Should I provide links?....Nah.)
That was Mike's experience this weekend, as we tried to concentrate on our daughter's first soccer matches of the season.
Let me just say here that this kind of blogosphere attack is becoming almost an every-day thing for us. As such, it's losing its power to make our hearts race with fury, indignation, rage, etc. These guys are going to have to step up their game if their aim is to upset us.
Still, this went beyond the normally trite Mike-hating posts in that it could have harmed us. It could have poisoned the job search, conceivably keeping us from paying bills or sending our daughter to college. It could have, and it still might. We have no way of knowing.
So why do we forgive the person who released that application letter?
Because she seemed genuinely remorseful when Mike talked to her. No doubt she believed the blogger would have excised the name and used the application letter as an instruction to his readers. As it turns out, trusting a blogger can be risky, perhaps because many of them believe they can never be sued.
Coincidentally, compassion and forgiveness have been in the news lately. The person serving time in Scotland for the Lockerbie airline bombing was recently released because he is suffering terminal cancer (NPR Talk of the Nation topic today, in fact.)
Science also suggests that forgiving a wrong-doer is good for you physically (here's another Talk of the Nation that's worth the half-hour listening commitment.) It lowers your blood pressure, for one thing. Not that we ever thought of our health.
No, we forgive that hiring manager because it just seems right. The bigger the mistake, the bigger the lesson. She learned about snap judgment and trusting the Internet. Mike learned about an effective job application. I learned about--well, I'm sure I learned about something.
I have no doubt we will all end up improved in some fundamental way by this experience.
In my humbly optimistic opinion.