Let it Go
From the moment that I conceived Charlie’s story; I knew it would be centered around one word: Forgiveness. Forgiveness has been a central learning point in my mortal experience. I have been presented with so many opportunities to practice and perfect my ability to forgive. And guess what? Forgiveness is still hard for me. I am not sure that forgiving is ever supposed to be easy. I do know from my personal experience that forgiveness is a game changer.
Before I had an awareness for the need to forgive, I saw the world through the eyes of a victim…. “someone has done something to me, and I am hurting”. From this paradigm I believe I have been victimized by someone else’s actions. And this is very likely true. The problem with this view, is that I remain stuck continuing to focus on the fact that I have been wronged. At this moment, I have given all my power to the person who I see as harming me. So, now I believe not only am being hurt, but I have absolutely no power to change my situation. This is a very sad and frustrating place to live.
I have stayed in this place for long periods of time throughout my life. Unfortunately, staying stuck here caused me to build up resentment and anger. What I have learned is that both resentment and anger are very unhealthy mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
I was fortunate to learn from some great teachers in my life, that the only way through resentment and anger is forgiveness. I will admit that it didn’t make sense to me at the time. How could saying “I forgive you” make me feel better. Afterall, it doesn’t change the fact that someone has wronged me.
It is true that forgiving another person does not undo the wrongdoing. It also doesn’t mean that they are sorry for what they did. In fact, it’s even a possibility that they aren’t even aware that they have harmed you.
Forgiveness isn’t for the other person’s healing. Forgiveness is for my own healing. Forgiveness is an act of letting go because I choose to heal myself. This is very easy for me to write this, but I know from personal experience that this is not easy to implement. At one point, I just had to make the decision that I wanted to heal. I had to make the choice to choose forgiveness. I had to choose to let it go.
Hopefully Charlie’s story will help to demonstrate the power of forgiveness.
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Whatever our religion, we know that if we really want to love, we must first learn to forgive before anything else.
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned
―Buddha
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