At the first college I went to, which I later dropped out of because it was austere, cruel, and awful, I went to a little high school tour day thing. They had a seminar for prospective students; one of the faculty talking had people coming up and asking him questions at the end, in a classroom. This was fairly informal, but it had this stuffy bullshit ‘prestigious,’ ‘serious’ academia vibe like, ‘ooh, this school is really tough, gonna be really miserable for you.’
And I asked the speaker at the end, like, ‘So what do computer science majors actually do day to day in classes? Like, what sort of projects do they work on?’ Completely earnestly, because I was curious because I thought it’d be a cool answer. And he literally said to me, ‘That’s really more of a lunchroom question,’ in the most pretentious tone I’ve ever heard in my life. good christ.
And I went to that school! And it was miserable! Honestly, I didn’t even fully understand or realize how utterly rude and pretentious this dude was being to me until recently. I thought I was asking a ‘silly’ question, but NO! NO, absolutely not, it is absolutely a valid question at a college tour day as a little high school kid. And this guy genuinely seemed so offended and put off that I’d dare ask him a silly question, like he was above answering. I genuinely did not have the brainpower at the time to process such an upjumped pretentious moron.
You’re not going to like it, but the way you get over and past something like this is forgiveness. You have to forgive the pretentious twat who had the temerity to speak to you that way; you forgive him because that’s how you eliminate his power over you. You forgive him because that’s how you pull out the hooks. You forgive him because the alternative is, what? Carry this around in you forever? Find him and beat the shit out of him?
Just forgive him. Ultimately, he didn’t have your gifts - the gift of grace, the gift of the expansive generosity of spirit that leads a person not to construe literally every social encounter as “which one of us is coming out on top? It better be me.” The gift of not reflexively being a shithead to people, maybe. Whatever. You almost pity him. Almost.
Forgiveness is how you get past it. People don’t like to hear it, but it is.
Gold medal answer
When you forgive, you set someone free. And that person is yourself.