As It Ends So It Begins …
As I look forward to the close of the year, I find myself contemplating the subject of forgiveness more and more.
And what I notice most is just how much my attitude toward this particular subject has changed.
Like most people, I am embarrassed to admit, I once believed that I had a right to decide who was “worthy” of forgiveness and who was not forgivable.
What I realize now is that I never really differentiated between an offensive action, and the person who had perpetrated it. Ergo — if you did something “unforgivable” then you, the person, became “unforgivable” until I was ready to trust you again.
My error, it seems, is that I failed to differentiate between trust and forgiveness.
In other words, if a person proved to be untrustworthy, I saw no reason to forgive them for it — and yet I also believed that I myself was worthy of forgiveness whenever I made a mistake.
Is this rational?
Better yet — is this fair?
My wiser self would submit that it is not, for now I see the absurd irony of my thinking.
More importantly I realize that it is in fact quite possible to both know that someone is not trustworthy and to forgive them for being this way at the same time simply by accepting that this is the point that they are at in their personal development at the current time (as I myself once was).
One thing I can say for certain — we are all experiencing life as humans engaged in a journey of self-discovery and as a result, we regularly make decisions (both good and bad) to experience the effect whether we realize it or not.
To deny this simple truth would simply mean that you have currently chosen to experience the effects of living in a state of denial at this point in your journey.
Similarly, to fail to forgive another is simply to choose to experience the outcome of being unforgiving.
Ironically, one might equally argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this if you are at a point in your personal journey where this is what you most need to experience.
I will let you be the judge.
What I now find even more intriguing is the possibility that we are actually here on earth to learn how to allow each other to have these experiences without malice or prejudice.
If that is the case, then there would be no reason to take any of the actions of others personally — a very liberating thought indeed.
Am I right about this?
Only time will tell.
But in the interim, I can predict that if you are very lucky, a day will come when you want to hang up your sword — a day when all you crave is peace and love and a happy life.
And my goal in writing this post is simply to share a key point — if “happily ever after” is to exist in your lifetime, it can only be accessed through the doorway of forgiveness.
