Another
detour today and one of a more serious nature—but hold on, we’ll get to writing
in a minute. Anybody who's ever been dumped or rejected, or experienced a parent who played favorites,
or a boss who did, was betrayed by a friend, or had a cheating spouse knows
that forgiveness does not come easily. Every
day we hear about or are faced with acts that seem unforgivable: losing a loved
one to random violence or losing years of your life for a crime you didn't commit.
And yet every spiritual and religious tradition extols the benefits and
importance of forgiveness.
One of the reasons it's hard to forgive is after injury, you go back to your own life. You have to sit with the pain, and how much you have been harmed, and ultimately how vulnerable you feel inside—tender, pliant, bruised.
And those are difficult experiences to hold. Forgiveness comes after wrestling with all that. Forgiveness becomes a gift that we can give to ourselves that lightens our burden, but it only comes only when we have struggled with our own demons.
The
basic injunction is to be kind or, do unto others as you would like them to do
unto you, is easy to do when others are nice as well, but when one is trying to
live a more enlightened life, it seems that you are presented with harder
challenges and tests something inside you when someone isn’t kind, fair or
respectful.
When
you are badly hurt, it’s hard to move on.
Yet there has to be a better way— to make some peace. Why not write a
letter to your avenger and take your revenge in words, say whatever you want; let
your hand flow. Don’t think about
length, grammar, punctuation or repetition, just purge. When finished, don’t
let anyone read it, don’t mail it, or talk about it, that’s right— mum’s the
word. Let it sit in a drawer and when you’re ready burn it, as an act of
closure. This action may result in forgiveness to wipe the slate clean and move
forward with openheartedness, and as Desmond Tutu said, without forgiveness
there is no future.
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