PROMISE OF FORGIVENESS…EMBRACE YOUR CHOICE

Does your room really have a view,
Or even a window to look through?
All I want is for you to look inside of you.
Don’t be afraid to walk through the door.
Believe it or not, you’ve opened it.

–  Chris Cormack

(Mind Moon Circle Quarterly, Autumn 1992, pp.21)

 

Can you forgive your wrongdoers?

By and large, we find it so demanding to muster up earnest compassion for those who have wronged us. In last three decades of my successful professional passage, I have also witnessed individuals who have been vindictive towards me and others…compulsively malicious in enduring disproportionate harm. My perpetrators were insatiable, venomous, and sadistic. They insentiently exuded enormous deceitful Ego. Undeniably, it used to trouble me when they did it, but retrospectively, I just find it pitiable. Probably that was uglier manifestation of their truncated self-esteem and self-absorbed fragile character. No one ever goes looking for cantankerous dynamics in the structured corporate world. Nevertheless, it happens all the time and more so as you climb up the ladder.  But one important question underlies our experiences (whether we think about it consciously or not ) : How we react to dejection?

Subjective vindication is much complex and pervasive in confined large corporate power corridors.  At some point in our career, we all have inadvertently stumbled over such caustic power-mines. The vindication is manifested in many ways: downright side-lining at work, throwing unsurmountable work load, public reprimanding, placing under a less competent person, royal isolation, use of offensive  language and treating like absolute garbage, manipulating environment, insignificant roles, poor performance ratings , holding promotions, terminating job, and many more such gimmicks. More emotionally dysfunctional the person is, tauter he will be in holding the disgust against you.

It is so common…widespread…It is everywhere: In all walks of our life

By the same token, it is also very natural to strike back when we are hurt by someone. We want to speedily redeem control over our life.We label that person as inhuman forever. We radiate with toxin emotions. We want restitution for harming our pride. We feel angry and aggrieved. We want to take revenge. We also yearn to run him off. We relentlessly hunt for a favorable occasion to ventilate our inner volcano.  We demand unconditional apology.

At best, you would want to reconcile upon certain imposed conditions, but you do not want to forgive and move on. Even though forgiveness involves only you…A reward that you can graciously offer to yourself to come out of the distressing past. Yet, it is so barbed.

Aren’t we responsible for choosing our own response? How somebody can insult you without your permission?

Why it is so difficult to forgive?

May be it is a primeval survival reflex OR…We too, Like Philosopher Jacques Derrida, believe that forgiveness is impossible.

We all know about Charles C. Robert and the Amish school shooting on October 2, 2006 that left five little girls dead. But within few hours, the Amish community members and family of deceased victims attended Robert’s funeral and comforted his widow. I believe, that was an incredible gesture of forgiveness.

The world around us is full of such extraordinary compassionate demonstrations.Our literature and ancient texts are overflowing with similar examples.Yet, it is not that unpretentious a process for all of us.

Why it is so common to withhold forgiveness? Why we all have an unhinged rational for our spiteful actions? Why our behavior is so hard–wired? Why we feel some sense of fulfillment after settling a score? Why we do not independently witness or try to be aware of our own harmful emergent vindictive anger?

There are various reasons for this.  We may believe that by forgiving we are allowing an injustice to propagate. Feeling of hurt or victimization is an unadulterated nourishment for our ego. The same Unforgiveness reflexively seakales us with past. We become more vulnerable and weak. Our pride balloons beyond our manageable limits. We become hostages of someone’s action. By forgiving we do not want to eliminate the very cause of our hurt. We want to remain weighed down by that guilt. We do not want to heal our wounds. We continue to denounce the cause which has disrupted our structured life. We would work hard to suppress the hurt. We put enormous efforts to forget the hurt so that we become normal again. We forcibly strain to erase the event as if it had never occurred. Such clamping down makes it further harshly embossed in our mind. …But we do not want to forgive the cause.

Please remember: Forgiveness is a choice.

It should not be out of compulsion or penitence. It is not obliging or effecting a duty. You have to decide on forgiveness without being judgemental. Often first we judge and then forgive. Who are we to be a judge of others? It is not a Pythagoras equation.The realization has to be dispassionate. It will help you grow wiser. To forgive takes genuine power of your mind and heart. An elevated act of freeing yourself. Believe me, a transition from condoning to accepting is not easy. None of us are unflawed. Therefore, we cannot be selective in forgiveness. You cannot categorize the merit of a person whom you want to forgive. The act is within you. It is your consciousness. You are the central figure and not the person who has outraged you.  It is all conditional on whether you are ready to forgive or not?  Everything is forgivable. You will never be able to forgive if you are burning inside. Most often we do not want to forgive because we have never experienced the fertility and ecstasy of forgiveness. Besides, more we learn to calmly reflect upon such unpleasant episodes, earlier we would want to let go the feeling of victimisation.

Forgiving does not mean we are acknowledging the act. It does not mean we are negating the hurt. There is nothing wrong in living through and acknowledging the hurt, in order to rightly forgiving a person. Moreover, when path of your life vision is beyond such trivial issues, forgiveness will make lots of sense to you. Forgiveness does not mean we are repudiating the anguish. It does not mean to continue to relate with someone who has hurt us. Forgiveness means letting free from the nagging feeling of antagonism, bitterness, and animosity. It is only for our wholesome emotional well-being. It is like literally putting off the entire burden of the judgement from our consciousness.

To forgive is divine… A promise of the highest order… A majesty of your soul.

Let me conclude this post with a befitting quote from Desmond Tutu:

“Forgiving is not forgetting; It’s actually remembering…remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”

Feel unreserved to take a stab at any dimension of this post. I’d love to pick-up what you all feel.

Awaiting your thoughts…