When people have wronged you, hurt you, nearly destroyed you, it hurts. It makes you angry, it makes you want revenge, as it can and sometimes does threatens to overtake your life. Your focus ceases to be your own life, rather than concentrating and planning for the future, you end up living your life in the past, and in some ways by letting this happen, you are actually still letting the person who wronged you win because in effect they are controlling your emotions and ultimately your destiny.
It is difficult to forgive, but until you do, you can never really move forward with your life. Not being able to forgive someone is a little like wandering around in the wilderness without a map. You don’t want to let go, to show a sign of weakness, you know that when you do, the anger will dissipate, and does that then mean you are showing weakness? But until you make a decision, you are wandering around almost lost in a fog.
Contrary to what your mind might be telling you, forgiveness is not a sign of weakness, not conceding victory to your opponent, not losing the battle. Forgiveness actually takes a lot more strength and determination, because it is actually easier to keep the fight going, keep stoking the fires, keep feeling that injustice, than it is to forgive and move forward. Anger is actually self-perpetuating, it feeds off itself, so as long as you continue to feel angry and annoyed so that feeling will fester and grow. But the minute you forgive, that pressure tension and anger will dissipate, much like letting the air out of a balloon. And the stupid thing about anger is that it weakens your decision-making process. People make rash and stupid decisions, whilst they are angry. They do things that they would never even consider in the cold light of day, and afterwards many people regret those decisions for eternity. By forgiving and moving forward you remove that anger, that temptation and that risk of doing something very very stupid.
Another reason why people are scared to forgive is that they worry about what they will become once that anger has dissipated. When you have been fighting an injustice with intensity, anger and determination for years, when your entire focus and determination has been on one solitary thing, once that thing is removed, due to your decision to forgive and move forward, then it can be like removing the very essence of the person you are. It is a little like what I imagine being a sports star is like , playing in front of thousands of fans at stadiums all over the country. The feelings, the passion the camaraderie, but when that career finishes how can you ever hope to replicate that in your life. Nothing will ever be able to give you that amazing feeling when thousands of adoring fans are screaming your name. And that is one of the reasons I believe so many sports stars struggle upon retirement. Forgiving someone means you must forget about the scab, the pain they have caused you. You can no longer keep picking it, looking at it, or bringing it up, it’s time to move forward and to leave that scab who may well have been like a best friend for many years behind. That is both scary and difficult to do, but it is what is required by forgiveness.
The other thing about forgiveness which many people don’t understand is that it is only a first step. Just because you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean the pain and hurt are going to disappear overnight, quite frankly it won’t. But the act of forgiveness is your first step on the road to recovery, the first mile in your marathon, and you can never complete a marathon without doing that first mile.
As stupid as it may sound, another reason people don’t want to forgive, is acceptance that they can’t change the past, but this is actually a fallacy. Because whether or not they forgive, they can’t change the past anyway. So the act of forgiveness actually changes nothing in regards to the incident, and refusing to forgive won’t actually change anything. In many ways once you decide to forgive you are handing yourself the keys back to your life. You now control your future rather than letting the anger, hurt,frustration and the past control your future. The act of forgiveness is as much for you personally as for the person you are forgiving.
In saying that, just because you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you are accepting what they did as right, or that their act no longer matters. It just means that you are no longer prepared to let that incident or occurrence rule your life anymore. Forgiveness is hard especially when you feel totally justified in your anger, but the reality is that the person you are probably hurting the most is yourself. Forgiveness is not about throwing in the towel, admitting you were wrong, or that what that other person did doesn’t matter. Forgiveness actually means you are finally taking the power back from that other person, and reclaiming your own future and destiny.