The Inevitability of Future Pain, With Forgiveness in Advance

Posted on June 30, 2025 by BRYAN FRANCES, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

When I was a boy in the 1970s I tried to convince my mom that nuclear war would probably wipe out most of civilization by the year 2000. What made my argument interesting was that it was fairly insightful. It wasn’t me who was insightful; I was just a stupid kid. But mostly by luck I had landed on some non-stupid reasoning.

My reasoning went roughly like this, supposing for the sake of specificity that I was 13 years old (1976):

Nuclear War is Coming. Suppose that in any given year from now on there’s a 97% chance there will be no nuclear war that year. So I’m assuming that for each year there’s a 3% chance of war due to accident or careful deliberation or insanity or whatever. There’s no way to know if that’s accurate or even what it means to be accurate here. But it’s a reasonable guess. So there’s a 0.97 chance there will be no war next year, in 1977; there’s a 0.97 × 0.97 chance there will be no war in 1977 or 1978; there’s a 0.97 × 0.97 × 0.97 chance there will be no war in 1977 or 1978 or 1979. Continuing the reasoning, there is a 50% chance there will be no nuclear war from 1977-1999 (that’s 0.97 to the 23rd power).

Maybe you have more confidence in humanity. Okay, let’s suppose you’re right. If it’s just a 1% chance of war each year, intentionally or by accident, then the odds we have no war from now to the year 2000 increases to 79%. Still not terribly comforting, is it?

I don’t remember what my mom said in response. I’m guessing she tried to poke holes in the reasoning. Or maybe she just thought to herself “That boy . . . sheesh. What the hell am I gonna do with him?”

Of course, no one would ever think that any of those numbers is accurate. But as a very rough approximation, there’s not a lot to complain about. Sure, the probabilities of nuclear war varied quite a bit from year to year, the years weren’t independent of one another, blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah, I know.

In spite of all those shortcomings, the story is useful. To see why, consider another case that uses the same reasoning—one that helps us become more wise about how to handle adversity in our key relationships. Every client I’ve ever had has found this advice to be extremely helpful.

Hurt From a Loved One. If you have a good friend for many years, the odds are quite high that they are going to say or do something very hurtful to you. Just use the same numbers as before. Suppose there’s a 97% chance they won’t say or do anything terribly hurtful in a year. That seems pretty reasonable, since there’s always a tiny chance that they fall into highly unfavorable circumstances that trigger their insecurities, faults, or weaknesses, and they end up lashing out at you since you were available and they weren’t in control of themselves. Part of being psychologically wise is realizing that truth about humans.

If you do the math, you’ll discover that over a roughly 20-year period there’s about a 50/50 chance they will eventually do or say something really hurtful to you. They might be your spouse, your sibling, your parent, your child, your favorite neighbor, or coworker. Prepare yourself.

That should give you pause. You now know that eventually things are going to end up very bad, even with the most loved and precious people in your life. Not only that:

Eventually YOU’RE going to be the one doing the hurting. You’ll be the person who says or does something really hurtful, somewhere down the road, towards someone you love.

Further, none of this is limited to the far future:

Hurt From a Group of Loved Ones. Suppose that in any given year, you’ve got 6 people who are close to you during large portions of that year. For each one, there’s a 97% chance that they won’t significantly hurt you that year. If you do the math, you’ll discover that there is about a 50% chance one or more of them will significantly hurt you sometime in the next four years.

There’s also about a 50% chance you will significantly hurt one of them in that same 4-yr period.

How do you feel about all this?

For what it’s worth, it makes me more forgiving. I know that my loved ones are going to screw up in a huge way eventually. It’s almost inevitable. Like I pointed out earlier, we all have our insecurities, weaknesses, and faults—major ones. No one is a saint, or even close. If you wait long enough, you end up in external circumstances that seem almost designed to trigger those problems you have, leading you to behave badly. This is going to happen to not just you but almost everyone, even the ones you love and admire the most. Even those great people are going to really screw up, eventually.

Given that knowledge, it’s not difficult to think “I should be forgiving, since this is inevitable for all of us, me included” when they lash out at you. This doesn’t mean they are malicious in any way.

You almost forgive in advance of the crime.

When the day comes, and she screws me over, or I screw her over, it’s like “Okay. We knew it was coming someday. I guess today’s the day. She’s not doing this because she’s mean or hates me in any way. And neither am I!”