Forgiveness

“Letting go” is a big part of life as we know it, and it’s easily tossed off as a glib piece of advice to someone who is not having a good day, perhaps recently broke off a relationship, or faced some disappointment that has stayed with them. And it is good advice. Holding on to things that no longer serve us, or perhaps put us in situations that can be detrimental is also very easy. We tend to hold on to the known pain, rather than face a new relationship, job, or situation that requires that we be open to new people, ideas, and activities. It’s the comfort with the familiar that keeps us shackled to the old, perhaps still painful, knowledge we gained in that role. We also hear things like, ‘Move on…,’ ‘Forget her. You’ll meet somebody else…,’ ‘It’s one job, and they don’t deserve you, so keep searching…’ are commonplace in conversations with friends and loved ones about what you’ve just been through, and though it’s over, you’re not quite on track to what lies ahead in your life. So how do we do this? This letting go, and moving on?

As many have noted, success in anything is a habit, practiced daily, and sometimes for a long time. If you wish to be a good golfer, working with a teaching pro will smooth out your swing, followed by time on the driving range, practicing what you’ve learned, then putting it into practice on the golf course, actually using your newly honed strokes playing golf and learning how to adapt to the challenges the actual course presents. ‘But what about those days at work where everything goes wrong, and we just can’t shake the feeling of failure. How do we practice for that? To move from sports to spiritual practices, which is what a lot of ‘letting go’ really is, there is no difference. Yoga has a highly physical element to what is actually a spiritual practice. Martial Arts, while they are spectacular to see in motion, are also a spiritual practice, with the underlying dynamic of learning to defend yourself and others so that you do not have to do so. Martial Arts take a great deal of practice to perfect and execute the physical demands the various disciplines require, but at base, they are centering, spiritual practices.

The above example of Martial Arts—which many see as aggressive and combative—takes incredible control to practice and become a Master, and the ultimate goal is not war and destruction. The latter is what we face when we have those difficult, challenging days that leave us angry, fearful, and eager to ‘pay back’ those who caused it. This is where the practice of centering ourselves, of finding that place of peace from which we can then navigate, helps us move toward forgiveness and peace, of ‘letting go’ and moving through life unburdened with negativity. It will be different for each of us, but it is so necessary in our lives. Seeking retribution, of ‘paying back’ for harm done to us, seeking the revenge we think will even the score and make us feel better, only serves to fuel the fire already burning, and leads us to causing an even greater wrong than me might have just experienced. Difficult as it may be, forgiveness and leaving the experience in our past is the only way through. Finding a way to say, perhaps only to ourselves, that this situation is awful, but that it will pass, and we will be the better for it in the end, is perhaps one of the ways we can practice forgiveness and letting go. Sometimes these will be empty words we try to feel, but the feeling of them being genuine and true eludes us, yet we still need to make the effort. The effort keeps our minds seeking ways to make this work for us, allowing us to practice letting go, even when we don’t feel it. This practice, this discipline, opens us to other solutions to help the pain we’ve felt, and ultimately, to being able to move forward more quickly, and with no regret, than we have ever been before. That is the beginning of the habit of finding love and forgiveness in the face of adversity.

Forgiveness, whether it is for a great wrong done, or for a minor inconvenience, is so healing, and allows us to move forward, unburdened by our past behavior. This can mean forgiving another for something, or being forgiven by another for our own behavior. These we are all quite familiar with, regardless of how and when they present in our lives. There is, though, another kind of forgiveness out there, on the fringes of our conscious mind, that we so often forget, but that has great power when we are able to remember it, and to forgive for it: Forgiving ourselves.

Self-forgiveness is a little more difficult to see sometimes. We are taught to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions, and as humans, we often fail to do or say the wrong thing, and so find ourselves in the position of apologizing to someone for something we did that did not go as we thought it would. Even that sort of self-forgiveness is easier to see than not. When we delve deeper into our minds, thinking about our journey through life, and of how we arrived at this particular time and place, we begin to see things done, and left undone, that were a necessary part of our path, that, in retrospect, did not show our best side, either to us, or to others we encountered at the time. This is a chance for self-forgiveness, for not knowing better at the time. And how could we have known better at the time? Learning is usually the result of failing at something in a particular way. When we try again, we do it differently, and learn from that, too, be it successful or not. We all journey through life, knowing what we do know, and hopefully learning what we do not. Forgiving ourselves of past behaviors, those we thought would work, but did not, allows us to let go of the guilt of those uncomfortable situations where we did wrong, and truly move forward with our lives.

Life presents each of us with different trials, tribulations, and difficult, sometimes confusing circumstances that challenge us to navigate this new path in front of us. Sometimes, the situation demands extraordinary behavior, particularly when our lives, or the lives of our loved ones might be at stake. The stories of survivors of war-crimes, natural disasters, abuse, and so on are a testament to mankind’s ability to triumph over tragedy, yet these events sometimes force them into behaviors and develop survival patterns that serve them in these terrible situations, but stay with them afterward. Many of these stories also relate the person coming to terms with the horror of what they had to do in order to survive, as well as finding their way to being able to forgive themselves for what they needed to do to be able to live through the ordeal. These journeys are difficult beyond what most of us face on a regular basis, but the power, and the necessity of forgiving ourselves for not being our best, for not being ideal, for not being wise, for making the wrong decision, and living with the results, is there for each of us to access when we need it. By forgiving ourselves, we are showing our own souls compassion, mercy, and the absolution we all need, but that we so rarely give ourselves. The road through life can be bumpy enough without us needing to be hard on ourselves unnecessarily. Forgiveness of another is a simple recognition that no one is perfect, that we all make mistakes, that mistakes can be fixed, and that life is too short to hold on to these things. Forgive yourself for who you needed to be.

Tag: Forgiveness

Letting Go Takes Practice