Forgiveness

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

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Yesterday morning on my way to work, I started thinking about recent events.  The situation that has been bothering me so involved a personal offense, something somebody else did to me.  I considered the possible paths in dealing with it.  As I saw it, there were only two.

First, I could choose to hang on to the feeling of hurt.  I could continue to be angry about the offense and keep the wound of it inside me open and bleeding.  I could keep treating the person involved with suspicion and all the other negative side-effects that spill out of the type of thing that happened, which no doubt would cause a chain of badness to cascade forth on that side as well.

Or there was the other way.  I could choose to forgive it.  My immediate reaction after thinking this was, “No.  Not this time.  I’m done just letting crap go.  That’s weak and it solves nothing.  It’s not a solution; it’s avoidance.”  And maybe there’s something to be said for that.  In my opinion, some people take far too much without protest.  They tuck away every hurt, maybe because they don’t think they have the right to say anything or maybe because they erroneously believe it’s the best way to keep the peace, and then one day, they explode.  The total denial of their own needs, their own personhood is destructive and unhealthy.  This type of “forgiveness” is not what I’m talking about, though.

This morning, I really thought about what it means to forgive somebody for possibly the first time ever.  When it is truly done correctly, it’s not passive-aggressive avoidance.  I think it is the opposite.  It seems to me that it is a choosing of the person over the issue.  When somebody hurts you, you have to decide which is more important to you, the one who gave the injury or the point over which they wounded you.

Forgiveness is not about being weak and letting things go, about letting people run over you.  It means you decide that the individual matters more than the individual mistake.  It’s about saying that you feel that a relationship, a thing made of many actions, is more valuable than an offense, an action which even though it may have huge consequences is still only one incident.  It actually requires a great deal of strength because you have to focus not on the thing which causes pain, that most recent encounter with that person usually, but on the entirety of them.  This is acknowledging, too, that is frequently much more satisfying to hold on to the bruised heart and wail, point fingers and plot revenge.

Ultimately, if forgiveness is not given then I think it probably hurts me much more than it hurts anybody else.  It’s just a sharp shard of glass I’m holding in my hand and squeezing until the blood flows, opening and closing my fingers around it again and again every time I think about the wrong that’s been done me.  It’s much better to put that down and just get on with getting over it.  That isn’t a simple or easy thing, and I don’t mean to diminish it or the time it can take for the negative effects of actions to dissipate despite the best of intentions to forgive in the world.

Yesterday after I made that choice, I saw the source of my personal conundrum.  I had already decided that the person was worth more to me than the problem, and although our encounter was brief, I addressed him with that attitude.   Today, I saw him again.  While I don’t know that I will ever feel the way I once did about that person, because let’s face it, although the childhood nicety is “forgive and forget,” the latter is just not actually possible, I did choose to deal with him according to my new philosophy.  It was much more pleasant for me.  I could not possibly speak as to what it might have been on his side of the equation.  He will have to be responsible for that himself.