There are many things I could talk about this month, and maybe I might have time to do another post later before the month is over, but there is one subject that jumped out at me to share. This topic is a reoccurring thing for me, and I feel the need to share and talk about it with others because it really is an important thing to know and understand. I want to talk about forgiveness—forgiveness to others, but most importantly, forgiveness to ourselves.
I used to shy away from that word—forgiveness. I never really understood why. Nowadays I understand all too clearly. I shied away because I couldn’t bring myself to forgive myself, or anyone else. This stemmed from a lack of compassion. My heart over time had become so full of all the wrongs in this world, I couldn’t conceive of trying to make anything right.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed if we were never taught how to combat overwhelming things. If we never learned the tools to move past the daily hurts and see the positive in every situation. If we never allowed ourselves to feel deep compassion for ourselves or for others, because that’s not how we are taught to interact in our society. When our hearts become closed and hardened, forgiveness becomes impossible.
I can’t speak for all people, but I can say that for me forgiveness has been the hardest lesson of all to learn. We typically learn from an early age that the blame always falls with someone else. And maybe at times this is the case. Maybe there are many people who have hurt us along the way, but I think in some ways we do invite this sort of hurt onto ourselves. Because deep down we are nursing something that needs to be brought to light, but are not able to do so for one reason or the other. We think we don’t deserve better, or we simply feel helpless to do anything about anything.