Forgiveness

My New Year's resolution in 2012 is to work on forgiveness.

Okay, to be perfectly accurate, I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, because psychologically making a promise solely to have something to promise on a certain day equates to inevitable failure.  However, I do believe in constant self-improvement, and consider it acceptable to re-affirm commitments as a resolution.  So, to be more accurate, I have re-affirmed to work on forgiveness in 2012.

It seems like forgiveness should be one of the easiest resolutions to accomplish.  I mean, it takes, what, five seconds to say "I forgive you," as opposed to countless hours of exercise and diet regulation to lose 15 pounds.  Yet true forgiveness can take more time and effort than shedding 50 pounds, and bring up a lot of confusing questions.

However, forgiveness can be far more rewarding.

I ask myself, "Why forgive?"  The obvious answers are "to improve relationships" and "because I would hope someone would forgive me if I made a bad choice that negatively affected them."  The best answer came from a 7-year-old.  "Because it makes you feel good," she said, when we asked why would you forgive someone.  Wow, how did I miss that one?

In summary, forgiveness makes you feel good, improves your relationships, and sets a good example so other people are more likely to extend the same forgiveness toward you.  So why can it be so difficult to forgive?

I've been asked before if I'm the type to "hold a grudge." 

"Of course not!" I instantly replied.  After all, I don't sweat the little things, and when someone apologizes, I gain so much respect for them I couldn't possibly hold a grudge.  But there are two aspects of forgiveness that seem to require a serious mastery of the art.  First is forgiving the big things even when there is no apology or change in the offender's behavior.  That one is hard.  It's pretty easy to forgive by accepting an apology, and I interpret a change in behavior as being equivalent to apology. 

Following is an example of how behavioral change can, to me, be accepted as redemption instead of an apology. When I was in middle school, a bully I'll refer to as L.G. used to pick on me.  The highlight of his bullying was one day when, without warning, reached over and slammed my head back into the wall of the building behind me.  I held onto my resentment over this act for years, unable to forgive, even though I never saw him again after switching schools the next year.  I didn't think of L.G. often, but if something reminded me of the incident, the pain and resentment that surfaced were almost as fresh as the day it happened.  This lasted until around the time I entered college, when I happened upon a newspaper article featuring L.G., who had pushed a friend out of the way of a speeding car, suffering serious injury to his person in the process.  In that moment, I realized that the kid in middle school and the adult featured in the story were two different people, one having learned from his mistakes and become capable of deep caring and great personal sacrifice to help another person.  I found it impossible to resent him for the actions of a person whom he no longer was.

I've noticed other, less glamorous examples, such as a person who realized they hurt me doing small nice things afterwards, and accepted that as a substitute from someone who was too embarrassed to apologize.  Forgiveness came quite easily in those circumstances too.

My question is, how do you forgive someone who is rude to you, or makes offensive statements, ignores you when you say something bothers you, and so on, when they don't change their behavior at all?  My philosophy teaches me that forgiving the person and the behavior is emotionally beneficial, but I get stuck on the concept that forgiveness is some kind of reward for good behavior.

A good friend, S.W.K., set up a ceremonial forgiveness exercise for a group I led in Spring 2011.  She created a "river" out of blue construction paper, with white paper "stepping stones" across.  We each wrote down something we needed to let go of, crossed the river, and, on the other side, ripped up and threw away the paper.  It was a beautiful healing exercise, but not practical for repeating every day.  I continue to look for methods that can be practiced spontaneously when needed, and also with forethought when something big needs to be worked through.

I wonder if the trick is just waking up every day, and saying aloud, "I forgive ...."  Maybe you do it enough times and it sticks?  Perhaps then the rude comments and impositions stop bothering you.  Maybe there's a different method, some meditation trick to teach the mind to let go of behaviors of other people that are not within your control.

So my journey, slowly, continues, exploring ideas, rummaging the covers in the library, practicing meditation, and reaching out to strangers on the internet who may have stumbled into some insight they can share.