9 interesting things I've learned about forgiveness

I'm a bit of a grudge-holder.

This is not my favourite part of my personality. But I can see why and how it developed and I can try to have compassion for myself when I'm feeling bitter and resentful.

I used to hold on to and fuss over:

 Every. 
 Little. 
 Thing. 

I've gotten a lot better about that. I don't sweat the small stuff much anymore. Little things tend to roll off my back pretty quickly and easily.

And I'm getting better at expressing myself when I'm upset. I have been really pleased (and kind of surprised, actually) to have been met with a lot of kindness and understanding recently when I've had exchanges that have upset me that I needed to talk through with other people. Very often, hurts are unintentional and if both parties are willing, it can be an easy matter to sort things through and get back on a comfortable footing. In fact, working through a misunderstanding often brings us closer together with our friends, family members or lovers. Being able to work things out and salve hurt feelings builds trust.

However, when someone hurts me severely, and is not interested in trying to make amends or sorting things out, I usually feel like I'm falling apart. When that happens, anger and judgment are what I use as binding agents to hold myself together. It's a proven strategy for me. I've made it into my 40s without disintegrating into a chaotic mess — and frankly, I am grateful for the coping mechanisms that have enabled me to do that.

The unfortunate thing about that is that it can take me a long time to forgive major injuries.

So far, I have mostly succeeded (eventually) in forgiving people who've hurt me badly.

I feel like I have learned some interesting things about forgiveness over the years.

Here are my nine favourite things that I have learned about forgiveness

1. Forgiveness can take me a very long time.
   
2. I can work toward forgiveness, but I can't force it. It comes when it comes.
   
3. When it arrives, major forgiveness arrives all in a rush – an epiphany that feels a lot like a religious experience. Even if I've worked and worked and worked toward it, when it arrives, it feels like an instant transformation.
   (Incidentally, this is also my experience of deciding to let go of relationships. I'll be struggling, struggling, struggling trying to make something work that just isn't, and then I'll have what feels like a sudden realization that it is time to move on; that I simply need to remove myself from the situation.)
   
4. I believe I have experienced far greater benefits from letting go of my resentments than have the people I have forgiven.
   
5. It is easier for me to forgive someone who is making, has made, or has even attempted to make, amends.
   
6. Time and distance are essential components for me; it is really hard (perhaps impossible) for me to forgive someone who is in the process of hurting me in the present moment. I mean, I'm not Gandhi, or anything (although, from what I hear, Gandhi wasn't necessarily Gandhi either).
   
7. Forgiveness does not heal the wounds that have been inflicted.
   This is perhaps the most interesting thing about forgiveness in my mind. Even once I forgive the other, I still have to deal with the consequences of the wounds that were inflicted. Forgiveness for me is only the first step. On the plus side, forgiveness frees up a lot of energy to put toward working to heal those wounds. On the downside, the older I get, the more I understand (and believe) what my Nana always used to say about how the hurts we have experienced stay with us forever. She said to me many times: "There will always be a scar there." And I think she was right. At least for people with personalities like hers and mine. (She also advised against picking at those scars. I think she was right about that too).
   
8. Often, the people we feel have hurt us don't see the events that took place in the same way that we do.
   I don't think very many people set out to be the villain in someone else's life. And even when people are extremely harmful to others, it is often not in their best interest to admit to others or to themselves the harm that they've done. I find that most people have good stories/reasons/excuses for why they did what they did. They might even think the whole thing was the fault of the person who feels hurt! (And maybe part of it was. Owning up to one's own share in a dynamic can be an important piece in the forgiveness puzzle.)
   
9. Forgiving someone doesn't mean that you ever want to be in contact with them again.
   Some people are just not good for us. As a friend once wisely told me, "Hurt people hurt people." Often, if we keep certain people in our lives, they are just going to keep hurting us and keep needing to be forgiven. Now getting some practice with forgiveness can be a good thing, but there's a point where we are just beating our heads up against a brick wall. And, if we don't want ourselves to become the hurt people who hurt people, we need to protect ourselves from people who know how to hurt but who don't know how to heal or repair damaged relationships and broken hearts.

I may never become a master of forgiveness. Forgiveness might always come to me slowly and grudgingly.

But I have learned to trust that it usually comes.

Eventually.

In its own time.

And for that, I am very, very grateful.

Because forgiveness, when it finally arrives, unshackles my heart and sets me free to heal.

Troubled Thoughts and Nightmares

Every couple of weeks, I do a gig typesetting several pages of an independent arts and culture newspaper. Timelines are tight and content often becomes available in the middle of the night and has to be ready for the early morning, which means getting up in the wee small hours and doing some work.

Tonight is one of those nights.

Mostly, I find this gig pretty fun – the typesetting is right up my alley: intricate and detail-oriented. Sometimes, it feels a bit strange to get up in the middle of the night to work. Today, I had a long and busy day, with over 10 hours of work on various projects. (I'm getting ready to go on holiday at the end of the week, so there is a lot that needs to get done.)

At 9:30 this evening, I had worked through all of the available content for the paper and decided that I would go to bed and have a nap. With the amount of work left to do, I knew I would need to get up around 1:30 am to make my 4:30 am deadline. I find I work better after some sleep than after none.

So I went to bed – I brushed my teeth and followed all of my evening routines. I put the mosquito net over me to protect myself from beautiful July's seedy underbelly and went to sleep.

I woke up at 11:30 pm from the worst nightmare I believe I have ever had in my entire life. I won't go into too many details, but it was set on a magic island and involved a loop of repeated murders, suicides and infanticides. For good measure, sabotaged computer hard drives and giant, dead birds were also prominently featured.

There is no way to combine those things pleasantly — and my nightmare didn't even try.

What's up with that?

I don't usually have nightmares. At all. My dreams are usually extremely lovely, actually: whimsical, weird, funny and definitely comfortable and friendly. I am a frequent dreamer. I usually wake up from my dreams feeling highly amused and/or intrigued by the wonders of my subconscious mind.

This sudden plunge into the horrors feels like a wake up call. It forces me to look at the fact that I've been focusing my mental energy in dark places over the past several months. I've been letting my mind wander a lot of the time and it's been journeying in mostly unhappy and mean territory: thinking about mistakes I've made, feeling resentful about some of my recent experiences, writing imaginary hate mail, listing grievances.

I had been making a good effort to be mindful about how I was thinking over the winter and especially in the first few months of the year. I knew I was struggling with depression and tried to be really conscious about not feeding the beast with malignant thinking. I read a wonderful book by Thich Nhat Hanh which a dear friend gave to me. I was meditating on kindness and forgiveness. I started to see improvements in my mood. But as summer came in, I fell off the mindfulness wagon, right back into my old habits of anger and resentment.

My nightmare tonight felt like a signpost that said: "The high road is over that away. The view is much better over there."

I get the message, loud and clear (it was a very emphatic dream!) I'm getting back on track.

I choose mindfulness and compassion

To adapt a meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh:

Breathing in, I am aware of the memory of my nightmare.
Breathing out, I smile at the memory of my nightmare.
Breathing in, I am aware of my angry feelings.
Breathing out, I smile at my angry feelings.
Breathing in, I am aware of my resentments.
Breathing out, I smile at my resentments.
Breathing in, I am aware of my hurts.
Breathing out, I smile at my hurts.

It's amazing the impact of those four mindful breaths.

This is where I want my brain to be: free to fully appreciate the night sky, the warm summer days, all of the glorious pleasures of being alive, of being present, of letting my heart accept, forgive and be kind.

In closing, I must say thank you to that horrible, horrible nightmare for telling me something very important. Anger and resentment are powerless to make anything better. Especially the past. And the only person I am punishing with my dark thoughts — is me.

Breathing in, I am aware of myself.
Breathing out, I smile at myself.
Breathing in, I am aware of my mind.
Breathing out, I smile at my mind.
Breathing in, I am aware of my heart.
Breathing out, I smile at my heart.

And now, time for another catnap before more content is ready and the typesetting resumes.

Fingers crossed for a dreamless sleep!