Forgiving Oneself

In the present Western culture of guilt and shame, the greatest block to forgiveness is often that one is unable to forgive her-or-himself. Society’s disturbing propensity for blaming the victim is so deeply rooted that even the victim almost always blames her-or-himself. Or, on the other extreme, people who do hurtful things to others will vehemently deny their culpability rather than face the terrible consequences of what they’ve done.

This latter tendency is more popular today that many realize. Because the vast majority of us perpetrate what might be thought of as "less criminal hurts" every day. We cheat on a test or on a lover. We spread gossip. We employ political maneuvering against a coworker that we, to his face, treat as a dear friend. We tell "white lies". We steal "little things". And then we take one of two extreme responses: we pump ourselves up with a feeling of entitlement or we tear ourselves down with guilt. Like all extremes, these two responses are merely mirror images of the same self-absorbed behavior.

A very subtle version of the entitlement tendency is for people to justify hurtful acts by the lessons that were learned. Now, of course, the ability of a person to learn from her-or-his mistakes is one of the most important virtues there are. And it certainly is absolutely essential that one learn from hurtful errors in such a way as to never commit them again. However, many of the acts we call "mistakes" aren’t committed out of ignorance. We knew a particular piece of gossip would be hurtful to a friend, we just didn’t expect that the friend would find out we’d spread it. We knew that a half-truth told to gain a political edge over a coworker was hurtful, we just never expected the coworker would find out about it. In retrospect, we label these as mistakes because if we could go back we wouldn’t do the same thing again, perhaps, to our credit, even if we could prevent the friend or coworker from finding out the next time around. But it’s a kind of arrogance, really, to say of such a mistake, "It’s good that I made that mistake… it taught me a lesson… I wouldn’t really change it if I could go back, because it’s helped make me who I am."

It’s true that life is stress. The stress of wanting to know more. The stress of wanting to help others. The stress of wanting to create something beautiful. Alright, most people like to call these things "drives" or "motivations" but these are just other words for a very positive and helpful kind of stress. Notice, though, that stress is one of those fine-line principles that exists between the extremes. Not enough stress and you’re dead. Too much stress and you’re dying. Stress, it turns out (at least in the manner we’re discussing it here), is an aspect of the governing principle, Love.

The stresses you have in life and the way you deal with them ultimately define who you are. You may simply flow with them, roll with them, dance with them, and ultimately be a courageous and creative person. Or you may resist them, disturb them, pollute them, and ultimately cause pain for you and everyone around you (because we are all, after all, inextricably connected in the feedback loop). What is critical to understand about both of these choices is this: either way you take the stress, you will learn the exact same lessons. No lesson worth learning demands the hurt of others for it to be learned.

Now remember that we’re not talking here about what could be called "honest" mistakes, mistakes of true ignorance or confusion. We’re talking about "character" mistakes, mistakes where one knowingly and deliberately took a hurtful path but now, for whatever reason, she-or-he is wishing that she-or-he didn’t. Whatever lessons are learned from making these specific mistakes did not have to be learned "the hard way". They could have been learned just as effectively without hurting anyone. And whenever someone comforts her-or-himself with the lessons learned, she-or-he denies, on some level, that a crime against others was committed. And in doing this, the person not only makes it likely that the "mistake" will be made again, but also plants within her-or-himself the seeds of self-loathing, the origin of which will completely mystify her-or-him later.

So clearly one aspect of self-forgiveness is frank admission that a hurtful, self-absorbed act was committed against others, and that there is no excuse for it. Yes, the act must be turned around by way of the lessons learned, but it must be acknowledged that it was a careless way for the instruction to be gained and things would be better had they been done differently. What happens in this process is a kind of miracle. Because we cannot acknowledge the impact of our senseless acts without acknowledging the personal power within all of us to be exceedingly destructive OR creative. And as soon as we acknowledge that power, we realize that the same thing that made us destructive can now make us creative, allowing us to right the wrongs committed and continue our journey on a better path.

The way this principle applies to those who wrongly blame themselves for crimes committed against them is very subtle. Because the crime that a person commits against oneself here is that of self-hate, and it truly is a crime because it takes a single event perpetrated by another and causes its horrors to last long after the usurper is gone. The usurper must be the one held accountable for the original crime, and for severe crimes such as rape the victim must be given much time to recover. But one thing the victim must have help in achieving is the ability to halt the mental and emotional abuse that is prone to be unleashed upon the victim by him-or-herself. Eventually, no matter how traumatic the crime, forgiveness of self and other is the only hope of healing.

As you can see from this discussion and from the example of Grandpappy’s life (since, ultimately, His great hurt was the price for our hard lesson), the path of forgiveness is not an easy one. But even more difficult, it seems to me, are the dark and torturous alternatives.