Forgiveness

I was speaking with a friend of mine yesterday. She was telling me about a particular person in her life that she refuses to forgive. She gave me sordid details of why she will not forgive this person for the heinous things they had done.

It occurred to me that she felt the need to inform me of all the details in an effort to convince me that what had happened to her that she felt this person was responsible for was certainly UNFORGIVABLE. It got me to thinking of why we often feel we have to justify our refusal to forgive someone.

I do not believe that we forgive others for THEM. I feel we CHOOSE to forgive them for ourselves. I have had the experience of refusing to forgive someone for what I believed was a terrible thing they had done to me. I clearly can remember how much energy this took away from me. I remember how much weight I was carrying around with me. Harboring feelings of anger, hatred, and resentment is an unbelievably heavy bag of bricks to have on your back. (Yes, yet another hypnotic metaphor.) How am I going to enjoy each moment of my life carrying around all that crap?

I am not suggesting that once we decide to forgive another we immediately are able to do it. I am stating that what is MOST important here is that we make a conscious choice of our true intention to forgive someone. Once we have done this, we are able to allow the healing and letting go process to begin. It is a journey and may take some time, but we can get there if that is our goal. We can be mindful of times when we were the one who was wanting to be forgiven by another. But, brick by brick anger and resentments can be put down once this choice to do so has been intended.

Once we forgive another we may still not seek to be close or even connected in any way with that person. That is our choice. All relationships end at some point either by changes that occur or by death.

I seek to not carry around with me all of the anger and resentment of unforgiving. The Buddha taught that we need to mindfully consider the true consequences of anger and resentment and then decide on whether or not we really want to hold on to it. Certainly, this is a choice we make.

Life is way too short to even have anger and unforgiving taking up space in our hearts and minds. I'd rather not have to carry around all of that heavy weight. It takes a lot of energy and effort to stay angry. I'll choose to use my energy in more productive ways.