Forgiveness? It's all about YOU My Friend.

HEY HEY HEY!  Merry EVERYTHING! So this is a biggie. Forgiveness is a tough one for all of us. Believe me — I’ve suffered from the exhaustion of holding onto grievances for far too long and one thing I know, it ain’t helpin no one. Learning how to tame and navigate this wild beast has been a great gift of learning and letting go and it still leaves me scratching my head. I had a tough conversation with someone over the weekend about some old old old anger they were harboring and just and wow.  Trying to keep from going ape shit on them while at the same time trying to talk them out of this pit was quite the challenge.  At the end of the conversation, I lost.  My charm and wit changed nothing. They're still mad (I think maybe at me now too).….and life will go on.

What I reeeeeeallllly want to talk about is the question of why to forgive at all.

There was a wonderful moment on a reel I recently saw, where a man raised this question: "My wife lied to me, and cheated on me, and left me, and destroyed our family — but I still have to pay her alimony every month, and it makes me furious. Do I have to forgive her?" The expert response: "No! Absolutely not. You definitely do not have to forgive her. You can hold onto your anger forever. It's up to you."

It's a CHOICE. Forgiveness is not a requirement; it's a choice. You can forgive somebody, or you can hold on your anger forever. That's the choice. It's entirely up to you. But at some point, you have to ask yourself whether that anger is really serving you — and if that's the platform that you want to base your emotional life upon forever. What do you lose by saying, "I am ready to let this anger go?" Does it make you weaker, to let go of your anger and your need to be the virtuous one? Or does it make you stronger? Easy answer.

When I look at other people who are holding onto their anger, it is so clear to me that this energy is destroying them. When I see other people who are holding onto their need to be "the right one", refusing to let it go, it's completely obvious that they are not living their life in peace (AT ALL) or focusing on what really matters. When I look at other people who live in the past, keeping their old grievances alive forever, it's so obvious that they are only hurting themselves. It happens, but there’s hope for all of us.

When I observe the unbelievable courage and power of people who have forgiven others, it makes me want to bow down at their feet, and learn how to be so brave and so good. And when people have forgiven ME for my misdeeds, I am so grateful — because we all long to be forgiven, and we all need to be forgiven. So I know all that. And yet STILL, I held onto my own lack of forgiveness.

Yet STILL — even with all the evidence that forgiveness is an act of liberation, grace, courage, humanity, and the highest possible human evolution — At times, I STILL wanted the privilege to hold onto MY gosh darn anger, to keep MY stubborn need to be the "right one" alive forever, to keep MY grievances burning forever... In other words, I could see easily how other people's lack of forgiveness harms the world, but I could not see how my own lack of forgiveness was harming ME.

That's because we get hung up on our own storyline — hung up on how wrong that other person was, hung up on how unfair that situation was, hung up on how right I was, addicted to how hurt I was. A wise woman once said,  "Refusal to forgive is an act of violence that you commit against yourself." The only person who is harmed by your lack of forgiveness is YOU.

KNOW THIS PARAGRAPH TO BE TRUE. When you forgive somebody, you are not saying that you approve of their behavior. You are not saying that what they did was right. You are not saying that you will ever allow them to harm you again. You are not even saying that you would welcome them back into your life (and in many cases, that's not even an option — because sometimes the people whom we most need to forgive are long dead.) You are only saying that you will not allow your anger and your pain to control your life anymore. Because your anger and your pain are poison. Even if they are "justified", they are poisonous to your heart. And when you refuse to forgive somebody, they will control your life and hold ownership over your emotions forever — even if they are dead, or even if you haven't spoken to them for years.

Many times, we don't want to forgive somebody because we don't want to give them some form of pass, but your act of forgiveness HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM. Your act of forgiveness is a gift of courage and liberation that you give to yourself. It's a blessing you offer yourself. It's not about what they deserve; it's about what you deserve. Because you want to be FREE. So this is where the difficult journey toward forgiveness begins — with the idea that you deserve to be free. Just learning that — these basic notions — I could already feel myself softening. Because that's all I really want — to be FREE. I hope the same for you. Have a happy day and thanks so so so much for reading. Feel free to share, like and comment if you’re inclined!