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WHEN SHOULD WE FORGIVE?
September 20, 2008
This is a tough question. In fact, more difficult to figure out than the act of forgiving. When do we really forgive the most important person we sometimes have wronged and we often overlook to appease? Ourselves. When should we start mending to finally hit the road to self-redemption. You. When should you forgive yourself of your own brokenness?
I say Today. Today piece your life. String memories together, glue the broken realms of your childhood, appreciate your youth with all its thrills and foolishness, with all its idealism and cynicism, too. Today, strip yourself of old wounds and the scars that led you to be what you are today: Hurt, Learned, Purged, Joyed and Forgiven. Today, forgive your indiscretion, your unsolicited pride, your unrecognized follies. Forgive yourself for demeaning your potentials, for looking short than what you could possibly envision, for seeing less of yourself whenever you get engrossed with the personal victories of others, for looking at people’s shortcomings as failures on their part. You must have been guilty of responding less to the present because either you are distracted by some past or preoccupied with some distant future. Forgive yourself then for your fears which sometimes forbade you to bet on yourself and just take a wild shot at life.
This life has taught you to dream, to fight for all its worth, to love beyond what you thought you are capable of, to hope in those dreams that one by one they will come true. At some point, life might have taught you to resurrect after unexpected blows that brought you heartaches, to have faith in others as much as in yourself, to forgive even those with treacherous hearts, to believe that you, just like anybody else, deserve to love and be loved back.
Sure you do have regrets. You have made darn mistakes. Mistakes you probably would not have done if you knew better. You hurt a couple of people. You trusted and have been betrayed or taken advantaged perhaps. You got angry at some. You must have erased indefinitely some people in your life and there’s no changing your mind about any of them. But you surely keep a constant few whose presence in your world teaches you that despite imperfections in relationships, they’re worth having.
Certainly you have dreams.. and have accomplished most of what you’ve planned, I hope. You have tried to enjoy life and get the best of everything that life has thrown at you. You get lonely, too. After all, you are human. You get vulnerable even when you seem tough. Even bones break. Even hard shells crack. Sometimes you do because you are not heartless and insensitive eventhough you have sharp edges. They validate that you have feelings, that you can be hurt and torn. But you try to recover fast unlike other people who may be wallowing in their miseries while you already found reasons to be happy. I guess, it’s a gift on your part if that is so. And you forgive others easily, though you may find it difficult to forget a hurtful act done, a piercing word said, a treachery committed. Maybe they linger to remind you only, no, not of the hurt you felt or the anger you had but for the important lesson of whom to trust, to care, to love and to pray for. After all, we cannot do much when others dump us, hurt our pride or degrade us, but we can outlive those negativity by learning from them.
By this time, you have already learned a great deal in this life and though there are things you want to change, you will not waste your energy trying to create a perfect, more tolerable past. You just want to do better TODAY and the years onward. Today, you’d like to forgive yourself for things you wanted to do but couldn’t or didn’t do… for the things you still want to accomplish but lack the drive to go straight toward them.. for plans you still have to go for but find yourself helpless to make happen.. for some people you may have failed to reach out to so they could feel appreciated and needed. In your own silence, am pretty sure, you would like others to do the same favor for you.
Today, continue to piece your life with renewed enthusiasm and hope in the possibilities. Your possibilities! You will have doubts but you will struggle to believe, right? You will meet setbacks that will drown your courage but you will rise beyond them, won’t you? You will take pride in what you have accomplished in this lifetime. You will be lonely but you will appreciate the rain-and-the-cloudy days of your youth just as much as you would enjoy the sunshine. You will be hurt at times but you will heal. That’s for certain. You will be happier and content. You will arrive on that day when you may have dreams that did not happen but you can actually smile with contentment; when you have some regrets but you can live with them; when you can look at life with more maturity and wisdom than you do now; when you can just laugh at all the foolishness you made on yourself. Most important of all, when you can be just happy where you are and what you have so far made of your life and the choices that were given you.
So when should we forgive then? Today. Right at the very moment that we have realized that we have gone too far with our bitterness, with our self-absorbed guilt, with being lonely and depreciated. We should forgive as soon as we are ready or feel the need to reconcile with our lost yet deserving selves. Today, receive the grace of forgiveness. We often bury ourselves in our failures and regrets that we find it difficult to forgive our weaknesses, shortcomings, incapacities and ignorance. But we are a mortal flesh less than perfect. And yet we perfectly fit to the category of those worthy to be forgiven for who we are and who we cannot be.
