How Forgiveness Can Set You Free

One morning sometime ago I had something of an epiphany. All my life I had been shat upon from a great height by all and sundry. As a child, I was sexually abused by a neighbour and a member of my own family. At school, as a shy, thin and undernourished eleven-year-old, I was physically beaten to within an inch of my life by neighbourhood thugs five years older than me. It goes on.

In my early teens, fresh into a working life, I was physically attacked by so-called workmates. I had dog shit pushed into my mouth and was bound and gagged and set on fire as some sort of sick idea of an initiation ceremony.

Later on in life when I started to climb very high up the career ladder envious none achievers nobbled me with a mindset of "Well I may not be able to get myself to the top, but I can surely stop that no-better-than-me bastard Liam from getting there."

Outside of the world of work, in my private life, I had to suffer two acrimonious divorces the first of which ruined me mentally, emotionally and psychologically and the second of which ruined me economically forever. I think you get the picture. To say it has not been an easy life would be the understatement of the millennium.

Of course, I kept a mental little black book listing all who had hurt me deeply. "One day...." I would tell myself. I even made mental plots to get my own back, wonderful flights of fantasy that in some way satiated my desire for what I saw as justice. I decided that one day I would act out one of these all too many dreams of revenge. However, I decided that not a single one of them was worth going to jail for the rest of my life. So I put it all on the back burner. I would act out my desire for revenge when the doctors told me I only had a month left to live. I reasoned with myself that this way the max I would spend in jail would be one month. Ha, talk about calculating.

Now I know that may seem a little sick too many of you, but it is a truthful recounting of what happens when a person goes through half of the shit I have had to wade through at the hands of other malicious, self-serving swines. And yet......that morning I had an epiphany. Read on and all will be revealed.

For some obscure reason, I found myself looking up a definition of the concept of forgiveness. My own definition of the concept was that I was supposed to give a call to the offending party and tell them that I forgive them. That somehow seemed to be something other people have done and have said it made them feel better. But somehow I just didn't feel able to embrace that idea and let the culprits off the hook. But looking up a fuller definition of forgiveness I did discover a way of embracing the best part of forgiveness, a part which the more I thought about it would set me free.

My version is that I do NOT have to call those people and tell them I forgive them, after what they did to me they truly do not deserve that. However, I realised that I can set them free in my own mind, and that was a revelation.

Out goes the little black book, the harbouring of negative feelings towards the sinners, the deep desire for some self-justified act of vengeance for their evil, inhuman acts against me.

All these years I have been a hostage to my lack of forgiveness, or at least the dark side of not forgiving. I finally decided that I am better than that, I deserve to be defined by the better parts of me, not the dark side. Of course, this was just the beginning, and I'm still not there yet, I have a long way to go. I have to reach the point of embracing what part I might have played in all that was visited upon me, at least in some of those situations.

Some hurts are so deep it is going to take some time to let them go. I do find it particularly difficult still to not harbour some bad feelings towards those who tried to kill me. I guess some things are unforgivable in terms of letting them know you are letting them off the hook. But letting myself off the hook, yes, I can forgive myself for harbouring those negative feelings which I find perfectly understandable.

However, in truth, whatever resentments there might be are very much watered-down ones anyway. These days I generally feel more at peace with the world due to some very positive changes in my life. The most important thing is to realise that I am no longer a hostage to those resentful feelings, feelings which can very much impede your progress through life.

One of the biggest leaps was recognising that by holding grudges you are allowing the other party to continue hurting you. People can only hurt you if you let them. So letting go of it all is a great way to go. Of course, I do not believe I can ever forget what has happened in the past. But what I can do is make sure I do not allow it to fester and grow by dwelling upon it too much.

The dreams of revenge have already faded fast into the distance where they belonged. And the further away they went the less harm they could do me. These days I am sailing away from it with the winds of change in my sails as I head forward into the deep blue horizon. A horizon of happiness and freedom from a self-inflicted jail in the deep dungeons of my mind. I'm free, free at last. Life? Bring it on. bring it on.

The important thing to remember is that you do not forgive for the good and well-being of your assailants, you do it for you.

Learn to forgive and you will learn to live.