#92: Forgive people. For yourself.
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
This is advice I have found the hardest to follow my whole life. If you believe in the concept of justice, it seems as though forgiveness goes directly against the concept that people should be accountable for how they act. But watching Oprah I saw her say over and over, “Forgiveness is giving up the belief that the past can be different.” This in itself shows that forgiving someone allows you to accept the past, along with give yourself the ability to move on from it.
I still can’t put this in to practice on a day to day basis. I still struggle every time I think of forgiving someone who has done what I consider the unforgivable. How will they know what they did wrong? How will they change as a person? How can they correct what they have done and make everything better? The answer is obvious if you have learned to forgive. Forgiveness is for yourself and your own healing.
When you hold onto what people have said or done to you, you literally and figuratively carry the burden. Your health may suffer, your life may be worse with those thoughts of revenge or anger and your spirit will continue to live in the hurt that the person caused.
I know that forgiveness seems easy when someone does not hold the door open for you, but insurmountable when someone has killed someone you love or neglected you as a child. But I think in the end, although those moments are not comparable, they have the same result above. Every time you go back to the sadness and unhappiness of the moment you were wronged, you relive it. You live in the moment of unhappiness and not the present. Refusing to forgive something forces you to live in the past. The present is where we make our most wonderful memories, where we feel true joy and where we allow ourselves to become better people. The past is over.
Sometimes the advice I put on here is advice I hope I can someday follow, not things I know for certain. I hope one day I can let go of the anger I hold for people and live in the present. I hope I can become an expert at forgiving.
