I’ll never forgive you!!

Esther’s Friday Blog – 1 September 2017

In my Monday Bubble this week, I quoted Dr. Webber from Grey’s Anatomy (upon suggestion from a friend of mine):

“Forgiveness is a Power – not only to make the other feel good, but to heal YOU…”

I haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy yet, but according to my friend, Dr. Webber says this to Meredith Grey at a time, when she has been beaten by a patient, who didn’t know what he was doing.

Forgiving another human being or maybe a whole group of people is one of the greatest things you can do.

“Why”, you might claim reluctantly. “There will always be someone, who doesn’t derserve to be forgiven”

Because you do not forgive for the sake of the other person, but for your own. You are the one, suffering, not the other person. Things do not improve by holding on to not being willing to forgive – on the contrary.

We’ll all meet persons doing things to us, which we feel is unforgiveable. For many people this is expressed in anger – often an anger, which we are not able to express to the person(s), who did the unforgiveable deed to us.

We could choose to express this anger to the person(s) in an assertive manner. This means that we “keep the ball on our own side” and tell the other person(s), how their deed affects us – i.e. how we feel about etc. However, this might be very difficult, if we feel that the other person has crossed our personal boundaries, hurt us, abused us, etc. At the same time we might be up against an opponent, who simply doesn’t want to listen to us, no matter how long we “keep the ball in our hand” instead of throw it against the other person(s)

This leaves us with three choises:

1. Forgiving the person(s) – which, however, is the hard part, so often we don’ts choose this
2. Turning the anger out towards other human beings instead. Unfortunately, very often this will be towards persons nearby – i.e. our own family. By this, we might ending up in a bad circle, and everything might start going in the wrong direction. It is very important that we are aware of this in time, so all the affected persons understand that this has nothing to do with them, but concerns a pent-up anger towards someone(s) from the outside world.
3. Turning the anger inwards and being eaten up by negative thoughts and emotions. This choice is exactly as disruptive as no. 2. Being eaten up and destructed from the inside might lead to imbalance on all levels. It might lead to depression, fear, and bad self-esteem – or even physical illness. Under all circumstances, all the negative thoughts and feelings about the person(s), who did us wrong is haunting us all the time – either on the conscious level or on the unconscious level. Either way, this might prevent us from being really present in the now and enjoy life fully. Maybe we will become “blind” to all the good things in life.

However, should we be brave enough and choose no. 1 – forgiveness – it might actually set us free, enabling us to dare live our lives fully.

It is very important to know that forgiving others do not mean that we accept and approve, what they did to us. At the same time as we forgive the other person(s), we can decide: “I forgive you, but I do not want to have anything to do with you anymore”. (We don’t have to tell this directly to the person – just inside ourselves).

Forgiving others is one thing – but forgiving ourselves can be just as difficult. When we have done something stupid we might punish ourselves by knocking ourselves on our heads, and everything goes on and on in our mind. To what purpose? The damage has already happened. Let’s forgive ourselves and decide that we’ll do tings differently from now on – and then – let’s move on.

Primarily, if we do forgive – we forgive for our own sake – in order to be able to move on in life and dare live life without having this huge and dark shadow lying over us.

How can we be able to forgive? I cannot give you a universal solution to this. Most of all, it is important to look at everything from above, enabling you to see the big picture. Start practicing in forgiving the small stuff (i.e. when you felt offended, because your sister got the bigger piece of the cake). Continue practicing and find more and more severe things to forgive – and see what happens. (If it is really heavy stuff, you might seek help elsewhere, as well).

It is very important that you are able to feel in your whole body that now you have forgiven the other person(s) (or yourself) – and that you have set yourself completely free. This can especially be felt in your mind, your stomach, solar plexus, and your  heart area. The mind will feel “empty” (in regards of this particular person/incident), and the stomach, solar plexus, and heart area will feel light and free of sadness and “knots”.

What about me? Am I good at granting forgiveness? Yes – and No……

Over the years, I have become better at forgiving others. I have found out that it is a waste of time walking around being mad at other people and not being able to forgive  them. Life is too short for that.

But I do still have one area, on which I have great difficulty in forgiving. Whether I’ll ever be able to forgive persons being responsible in hurting my family in one way or the other – I don’t know – but I am still working on it.

Are YOU good at forgiving others and yourself? Do you think there is something, which is unforgivable?

Photo: Freeimages.com – Jose Fernando Carli

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