I’m at an interesting stage of life, both chronologically and developmentally. I have been deeply humbled by my mistakes, miscalculations, and at times, plain old-fashioned stupidity. The gift in this reflection is that I believe it is much easier for me to forgive, both myself and others.
I used to scoff at the idea that we are all doing our best. To me, it seemed, clearly some people are not doing their best. From the vantage point of my forty-one years, however, I do believe most of us are trying our darndest, and we all need forgiveness.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t ask for forgiveness and make retribution when we’ve mucked up. We should. Steps eight and nine of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve-Step model affirm this. (Step Eight: Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. Step Nine: Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.)
The Tao says that we get upset by others’ behavior because we think it matters. In other words, we think other people’s behavior can harm the real us (our essential self) and we become unforgiving. By not forgiving, of course, we only hurt ourselves. A Course in Miracles tells us “Nothing real can be threatened.” What is “real” is the love within all of us.
According to Marianne Williamson’s number one bestseller A Return to Love, “Forgiveness is ‘selective remembering’—a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go.”
For most of us, being led by our ego, we find viewing our fellow human beings as innocent, especially the ones who we feel have hurt us, as a threat to our very being. If we are not at the effect of what someone has done to us, who are we? And after all, we are in the right and we define ourselves as such. However, we might ask ourselves the question, “Do I prefer to be right or to be happy?”
