Forgiveness? You know this word. You hear this word. You feel this word. You struggle with this word. We all do.
Merriam-Webster defines the word forgive as ‘to cease to feel resentment against (an offender): PARDON’
It’s not an easy thing to forgive someone and we all have been in a position where we have had to.
You know forgiving is not about the other person but for yourself. It has nothing to do with another but everything to do with yourself.
Oprah said forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. We get so stuck living in our past that sometimes we cannot see our today. We feel resentment, anger, hurt and it stops us from seeing clearly.
But forgiveness is freedom. It is for giving yourself the green light to move on from whatever it is someone else has done. You don’t even have to forgive them or tell them you grant them some sort of okay but it is releasing yourself from that situation and understanding that things happen, life doesn’t always go our way and it is okay.
What if there’s no apology
Sometimes there isn’t a person even to forgive because they are not sorry. What do you do then?
Sometimes you can do everything right and along the way someone will upset you or disappoint you. What do you do then? I hope you forgive them anyway… because life is too beautiful to hold onto grudges and feel anger when you can be happy.
Sometimes you will end up hurting someone who won’t forgive you either. Be willing to know that you will be okay. Feel calm in knowing that forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person but just yourself. And if you’re the one that has to apologise just do it and set yourself free from it.
Sometimes saying these words, I am Sorry, can be very difficult for some. So do yourself a favour and don’t expect an ‘I am sorry’ from anybody. Instead when someone hurts you, just say I forgive you, softly in your heart. I have been in a position where I had to forgive someone from my past who wasn’t sorry.
It was extremely difficult at first so I said these words Louise Hay taught me: “I am willing to forgive”
I wrote these words in my journal over and over, several hundred times, and when the person who had hurt me came around again to do the same, I felt free. As there was nothing left and I had practised the willingness to forgive so forgiveness came to me so beautifully.
I felt no hurt, anger or resentment towards this person but in my heart I had already forgiven them.
Don’t get me wrong forgiving somebody does not mean that you condone their behaviour or you are okay with their behaviour. But it is just a way to release yourself from that situation or person.
We often hear people say things like: I forgive but I don’t forget. But do you really? How can you forgive someone if you don’t forget what they did. You are still holding on to the events that occurred in the past and have nothing to do with your today.
Forgotten is forgiven.
F Scott Fitzgerald
I urge you to put it down. Put your past down. Let it go. Life is too magical to be wasted living in the ghosts of our pasts that haunt us.
Instead just breathe and like Elsa says ‘Let it go’ (Thank you Disney movies for all the life lessons).
Another one of my heroes, Wayne Dyer, uses these words spoken by Mark Twain “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it” in so many of his speeches. This is one of the most beautiful things I have heard about separating yourself from the past and all the mistakes in it and just revel in your today.
We only hurt ourselves when we hold on to mistakes of others. Forgiving is for giving away. so give it wholeheartedly. Grant yourself permission to be present today and don’t live in your past.
Don’t be one of those people who bring up what happened five years ago or 11 years ago and you did this me to me on this particular day because again life is too blessed to be stressed. Especially about something that isn’t even happening right now.
You deserve peace and it’ll only come when you let go of all that is bringing you down. Don’t keep that weight ad go through life. But instead, forgive and be free.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Lewis B Smedes
Don’t be a prisoner of your own resentments. Don’t be a prisoner of your past. Just exonerate yourself from all of it.
Remember always:
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi