How to forgive.

As I sit here on the park bench, I realize there are few subjects more difficult to tackle in counselling than forgiveness.  The bench itself seems to be no help at all, it feels hard and unyielding – like me when I don’t want to forgive.

This is the time of year when we tend to look at what we might change about ourselves and our lives, using the turn of the year to give us a sort of momentum.  We might decide we’re going to eat more healthily, visit our parents more, stop nagging the children/partner, clean the windows more often, go to the gym – not just pay the subscription.  The list of possibilities seems endless.

I’m going to suggest a different one: make a resolution to forgive someone.

And I’m not speaking from the moral high ground here – I always have someone who needs forgiving.

The most important thing to know about forgiveness is that it lies totally within our own power but it’s difficult to recognize this because when we think of forgiving, all the awfulness of what whoever it was did or said or didn’t say or do, comes to the surface and sticks in our throats.  It feels as if ‘Whoever’ should say something – like ‘Sorry’? – before forgiveness can take place but this is rarely a realistic expectation and if we wait we might have to wait for ever, arms folded, chin in the air and lips set grimly.

The trouble is that this sort of physical stance – and that’s just the outside – is not good for our health. We start by tensing the jaw and end up with arthritis.  We start by brooding over the wrongs that have been done to us and end up with cancer.  Our feelings in the matter may not be the whole story but they can contribute.  Then ‘Whoever’ has really ‘won’ if you are thinking about it in battle terms.

But we do have choice.  I have listened to clients who say, ‘I’m fed up being angry: I want to move on’.  They have made what you might call an executive decision.  They are saying to themselves,’ I know what happened.  I know it was wrong but it’s not happening today and today is where and when I am living’.

  This brings up another interesting point: we can feel that if we forgive it means we’re saying ‘Whoever’ was not to blame, that what he/she did was okay. It does not mean that at all.  Dwelling on something does not alter it.  If it happened, it happened.  Nothing can change that fact but we can change is our relationship with the facts.

Think of it like this: our lives consist of a succession of incidents which we pass through, a bit like passing through a forest, say.  As we go along, twigs get in our hair, mud on our clothes, stones in our shoes.  If we insist on staying with all these things, we are going to get more and more uncomfortable and grumpy and eventually we may become convinced it’s not even our fault we’re carrying whatever it is – the trees dropped twigs on me, the stones jumped into my shoe.  Obviously the stone didn’t jump and obviously you didn’t consciously put it there but you can see it is within your power to take it out.

Simplistic comparison?  I don’t know how huge your stone is?  How long it’s been there?  Dare I say it, how used you are to it?  This is true but I do know that you are not the stone and neither are you the twig or the mud.  Okay, let’s say you’ve decided to humour me, give me the benefit of the doubt and consider doing an experiment.  Good.  That shows you have a flexible mind, one that’s capable of deciding to move on.  The strange thing is that actually making that decision makes a huge difference.  It seems that putting yourself in a different mental space gets your mind working in a different way.

 To give an example of this: you are lying in bed wanting to stay in the warm.  A cup of tea would be nice but lying in the warm is nicer.  The cup of tea will still be there to be made in half an hour.  Then you remember you have no milk and suddenly it becomes much more important to get up because the cup of tea is no longer possible unless you do something.  You make the decision and then you become active – get up, shower, do hair, brush teeth, dress, go to the corner shop – if you’re lucky enough to have one!   The point is though is that all the actions followed the decision.  It’s as if the mind has a whole army of little helpers only too willing to set things in motion once they’ve had the go ahead from you and you can’t know their potential until you’ve made your decision.  They will have talents you’ve never dreamt of.

It is still January and you still have time to make your decision to forgive in the first month of the year and then reap the beneficial consequences for the rest of your life.

P.S.   Whether or not you are able to make the decision now, the following words may help you.  I was given them at a Mindfulness retreat last summer.  Say them to yourself, whenever you feel angry, sad, confused, upset.

1/  Addressing the person you need to forgive say three times: May you be safe and protected, may you be peaceful, may you be in ease, may you be in kindness.

2/  Repeat, addressing yourself: May I etc.

3/  Repeat, addressing some person who means a lot to you , present or past, dead or alive: May you etc..

4/ Repeat whole process for as long as it takes to feel calm.  This may take some time!

Whatever month you read this in, I wish you all the best for the next twelve.