FORGIVE
| "To err is human; to forgive, divine." William Shakespeare |
1564-1616 |
FORGIVING OURSELVES FIRST
Forgiveness begins with us. We have all done things in our lives that
we wish we had
done differently. We may have even done things that now
seem so stupid, reckless or
malicious that in retrospect even we find
those acts unforgivable.
Forgiving ourselves is important; It’s part of love. When we all
get to heaven we won't
make any more stupid mistakes, but as long as
we are human our judgments will be
susceptible to human error, miscalculation
and misjudgment.
When the president of General Electric makes a hundred decisions, you
can bet that he
looks back at some of them and wishes he had “zigged” instead
of “zagged”. Now, if
the president of a large corporation
like that can't make the right decision every single time,
how can you
and I be expected to do better?
Making mistakes is how we learn, how we grow, how we discover the right
way to conduct
our lives. That learning process, often painful, is unavoidable.
All we have the right to
demand of ourselves is that we follow our highest
sense of right under the circumstances.
Then, like the president of the
large corporation, we will learn from our mistakes.
Beating ourselves up forever over events we cannot change isn't helpful
but it can be harmful.
In order to forgive ourselves we must mentally
revisit every mistake, mentally correct every
error and specifically
forgive ourselves for whatever we did that was wrong. We must
mentally undo the wrong. We must forgive ourselves for making those mistakes,
(if that is
what we did), and for allowing them to linger, hurt and haunt us
for such a long time. If we did
what we thought was best at the time,
even though we now understand that our judgment
was wrong, then our mistakes
were really attributable to our stupidity, our inexperience,
our weakness or our lack
of knowledge. When we come to that realization and also become
resolute in our commitment to never do such a thing again, then our stupidity, inexperience,
weakness or lack of knowledge no longer exists.
If a mistake was so terrible that even we cannot justify our own behavior,
we must come to
a point in our lives at which we openly acknowledge the
wrongness of our action, become
determined to find and extract the lesson
from our mistake, condemn it, grant ourselves
forgiveness and resolve
to never make such a mistake again, - and mean it.
Condemning ourselves forever will not correct the wrong, heal the wounds or allow us to
move forward in our lives. The past is gone and cannot be
recovered. The present is
where we live, and making the present the best
it can possibly be must be our overriding
objective. We will never be
free from the torment of wrongdoing until we turn from it "with
loathing" and reject it as part of our lives, - forever.
When we have truly learned our lesson, then we have become someone who
would never
commit such a terrible act again. Mentally, we are no longer
the same person who made
that mistake. We are smarter and have grown
beyond that event of the past. That erroneous
thinking is no longer part
of who we are. We are a different, and a better, person.
We can always make amends to whomever we have offended, even posthumously,
and
we can also save others from making similar mistakes. The present
is where we live, but
in order to put erroneous thinking behind us, we
must have truly learned our lesson and
turned from the wrongdoing, learned
to loath it, and become determined to never let it be
part of us again.
Nobody can keep evil suggestions from coming into their thoughts, but
everybody has the
power to accept or reject them every time they appear. When we have learned to reject
evil suggestions, then our mistakes will
have become blessings in disguise. We will have
become wiser and gained
that indefinable quality of judgment that is attainable only through
what? – (that’s right), - making mistakes. It’s called
experience and anyone who has it will
readily admit that they made plenty
of mistakes in order to attain it. |
