Expect the flaw and the grudge dissolves

Half of holding a grudge is a kind of stubborn surprise. The chronically late driver is late again. The manager who always overpromises has overpromised again. The coworker who never reads the message before replying hasn't read it again. And every time, some part of you acts shocked, as if this were new information, as if the person might have been different this round.

Marcus had a blunt way of killing that surprise. "Art thou angry with him whose armpits stink?" he asks. "He has such a mouth, he has such armpits: it is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things" (Meditations 5.28, Long). It sounds harsh until you see the relief in it. You don't fume at a smell for being a smell. You stop expecting the flawed person to suddenly not have the flaw. The late driver runs late. That's what that person does. Plan for it, speak to it if it's worth speaking to — but the indignation drains right out, because the surprise was the thing feeding it.

A grudge needs the fiction that they betrayed your expectations. Drop the expectation that they'd be someone else, and most of the grievance has nowhere left to stand.