Degrees of Forgiveness

The HWK's

May 29

Forgiveness is acceptance, the acceptance of what occurred, of what took place. It is the understanding of the situation, the individual and the degree of which it all occurred. It is accepting the fact that you can’t change it, there is nothing to be done about it, except to move forward.

But how?! Because not every situation is the same, not every situation impacts us as the last… forgiveness varies and it is all relative to the situation at hand. Who it is… what it is… we are forgiving, more importantly to what extend are forgiving and why?!

It takes more to forgive someone we have known for years, then it does to forgive someone whom we have yet to put full trust in. It takes more to forgive something big than something small, and even more so should it be a reoccurrence. And in addition to that… why are we even forgiving?! Is it to mend the broken in hopes to rebuild or is it mend in hopes for closure?! What is the extend of our forgiveness? Are we closing chapters or revising old and/or current ones?

What’s important to note is forgiveness doesn’t entail continuation, it actually discredits it. In other words, if done correctly, forgiveness stops reoccurrence. Why?! Because it is acceptance, and anything you can accept, you can change.

With that said, many of us don’t actually ever forgive. Because we don’t even know how… better yet we confuse forgiveness with forgetting, thinking that by forgetting we are forgiving. When really it is the mere opposite, we are forgetting to forgive.

And more often than not, the reason why we ‘forget’ is because we are unaware of what it is we have to forgive. So we disregard the situation entirely, believing that as long as it doesn’t cross our minds, we have moved on. But, some things lay deeper than that, some things remain without our knowledge, laying in our subconscious. And we are completely oblivious, without a clue.

A lot of the time we think forgiveness is about the other person, when really it is about us. It has everything to do with us and nothing to do with the other person or persons.

You see, what has us twisted, internal knotted, is the fact that we let it happen. We let ourselves get hurt, we didn’t see it coming, we shouldn’t been more aware… more careful, how could we let that happen, etc. etc… We are our own worst enemies and we beat ourselves over everything, even the things that aren’t our fault… the things that are out of our control.

So majority of the time we not only forgetting to find closure, and by that I mean accepting, in the situation which occurred, but we forget to forgive ourselves for it even happening.

Therefore the questions regarding forgiveness must always be in reference to ourselves…
What is it you are responsible for?
What is it you need to forgive about your part?
Have you forgiven yourself about what happened?

And if you are denying, still telling yourself, you aren’t to blame. And it was them and only them, playing victim, you won’t ever relieve yourself of anything. You will continue to carry to pain of it all, risking the chance of it happening again. So I ask…
Have you accepted what happened?
What role did you play?
Have you accepted the part you played?

Because remember, no reaction… no response is still a response. And the longer we deny taking ownership, the less likely we will forgive ourselves and the longer we remain stuck.

Moving forward is about you and only you, forgiveness is about you and only you. There is no closure expect for the one you offer yourself. Because once you forgive yourself, the question that follows is to what extend do you forgive the other person? In other words, do you mend to close chapters or rewrite old/current ones?

And we can only answer this once we have found completeness within ourselves. Once we have clear idea if where it is we stand and what it is we stand for. Because you can’t control anybody else, you can only control yourself. And if you have yet to forgive yourself… take ownership, you will forever continue to allow unwanted reoccurrences, given that you have yet to love yourself enough to stand for yourself.

And so, majority of us never actually forgive, majority of us forget thinking we are forgiving. Essentially avoiding without awareness. Because we aren’t forgiving the vary person that requires forgiveness… and that’s ourselves.

Featured