Life & Wisdom Quote by Jessamyn West

West’s line is a neat little booby trap: it starts where polite morality likes to linger (forgiving other people’s mistakes) and then yanks the focus to the uglier, more intimate problem - our shame. The typo-ish “east” almost reads like a Freudian slip: forgiveness is “easy” only in the direction that flatters us. We can pardon someone else’s misstep because it preserves our preferred casting: we remain the competent, generous lead, they get to be the human supporting character.

The real grit, West argues, is forgiving people for having seen us fail. That’s not about their wrongdoing; it’s about our bruised self-image and the social debt of being perceived. The subtext is blunt: humiliation is stickier than harm. When someone witnesses your mistake, they become a living record of it, and you start treating their memory like a hostile act. Resentment becomes a way to regain control - if they’re “at fault,” you don’t have to sit with the fact that you’re fallible.

The phrasing “witnessed your own” makes the mistake sound like a private object you should have been allowed to manage alone. West punctures that fantasy. Life is public enough that our errors gain an audience, and adulthood means accepting the audience without turning them into villains. In a culture obsessed with curation and reputation, the quote feels quietly prophetic: the hardest forgiveness isn’t absolving others; it’s dropping the demand that your worst moments be unseen, unremembered, or irrelevant.