One person is simultaneously the easiest person to forgive and also the most difficult person to forgive. That person is you.
When you mess something up and people blame you for it, it’s easy to feel defensive; “Hey, it’s not like I did that on purpose!” and such. Another related surface level experience that comes from easy self-forgiveness: anger. We get angry at people when we think people wrong us, but forget that it works the other way around: they’re angry at us because we made them angry. But that part is conveniently forgotten by the mind.
In that sense you are the easiest person to forgive, in fact it’s so easy it’s unconscious. You’re not even aware that you give yourself the permission to slip so often.
Then you have the crippling feeling that comes from deep guilt and remorse. You have wronged yourself and you cannot let it slip. Every waking moment becomes a reminder of your failure and how can you be happy when you’ve done something so horrible like this?
There’s a thing that Korean parents like to say: “are you hungry with your grades? You’re sleepy with your grades?”. As long as you have bad grades, you have no right or privilege to be hungry or sleepy. You need to save the time you eat and sleep to study so you can get better grades. As extreme as it sounds, this is the mentality of the unforgiving mind.
Something you can do is learn how to forgive yourself. But the thing is, that isn’t guaranteed to stick. When someone betrays your trust for the first time, suppose you forgive them. But trust has already been broken once when it was intact; what guarantees the trust won’t be broken again? And if you don’t have this lingering doubt and get betrayed the second time, it will hurt more than double the amount.
As usual, a nice exercise to do is think of all the ways somebody can wrong you. Then put them on a scale. What’s the most trivial way someone can wrong you? Bump into you at the street when there’s a lot of people moving, but they say sorry? What would be something slightly more upsetting? They don’t say sorry? What would be more upsetting than that?
Going up the scale you will find that there is a line that defines the boundary between “can forgive” and “cannot forgive”. What do you think is the difference between the two, as you’re looking at the spectrum of ways someone can wrong you? Try and answer this yourself before you move on to the next section.
We tend to be unforgiving towards perceived permanent damage inflicted upon us. We can’t forgive people who hurt us so badly, it leaves a mark in our being. We tend to be unforgiving towards our parents because they are an irremovable part of us. Extending this line of thought, we can’t forgive ourselves when we perceive ourselves to have done permanent damage to ourselves.
In the early ages this can mean having bad grades so you can’t go to the school you dreamed of. Then it’s failing to get the job that was supposed to make you. Then it can be messing up in your relationship to let go of “the one”. Then it can be screwing up your relationship with your child. And so on. Each of these things can be PERCEIVED as permanent damage the person who keeps on having to live inside your life: you.
The important nuance is, “perceived” permanent damage. Not everybody who doesn’t get into a school feels the same way. Not everybody who goes to jail feels the same hopelessness one person may feel. Not everybody who gets divorced feels the same. Then what makes the difference? How important we feel the target of damage is. And to practically every single person, nothing is more important than themselves.
The dharma here is simple: since nothing is permanent nothing can be permanently damaged. The heart you broke by cheating on someone? Both of you will be dead within the next 100 years. The college you didn’t get into? The college might not be of the same prestige within your lifetime. When you realize that there is nothing to be forgiven, that is when you truly break from the unforgiving curse.
Jesus had no problem not working at a Fortune 500 company. When I say something like this the common retort is that Fortune 500 might not have existed but he was still an exceptional human by that time’s standards. And I’d agree with you.
Can’t we also extend that logic? You could have done better in the past by the past’s standards, but you didn’t. And you can’t forgive yourself for that. But that’s the past we’re talking about, and you happen to be living in the present. The present has its own standard of a good life, doesn’t it?
Recognize that the past is the past, and although it sounds so simple, it is not the present. You live in the present. There are things you can do today to be the person you want to be in TODAY’s standard.
To remind you again, nothing is permanent; tomorrow will have its own set of a good set of things to do, however you define good. Regardless of whether you forgive yourself or not, this will be the case. If it’s going to happen anyway, isn’t it better to move on with your life without the extra emotional baggage?
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