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Forgiveness
The ability to forgive is a skill I work on every day. I forgive those who have hurt me because holding onto the act creates ugliness within me. When I choose to hold onto offenses I become angry and hateful, a condition I refuse to live in.
Forgiving and letting go of the offenses committed by others comes easier than forgiving myself. It is so easy to beat myself up for the collateral damage my choices have made on the lives of my family. I have been working on only taking the blame for acts I am directly responsible for and letting my son take responsibility for his mistakes. I believed I was doing a great job (although extremely painful) of not being co-dependent and administering tough love towards my son. During a conversation this week about his progress, a very good friend brought to my attention the degree to which I blame myself for his problems.This week I had the opportunity to grow in the area of altruism and empathy.
While viewing a DVD on offenders serving time in prison, I listened to several inmates discus their feelings about re-entry. One young man revealed he had never finished school, had no driver’s license, never held a job or rented housing. His experience was growing up surrounded by drug addicts, in and out of foster care and correctional facilities and never participating in formal education. The piece of the interview that touched me was his level of apathy and look in his eyes. The insight into his view of life and his opportunities after incarceration hit me hard. Unfortunately my Pollyannaish view of life is “everyone has choices in life and we need to live with the result of those choices.” Making the correct choice in life is a matter of relativity. For me, not stealing a candy bar is the correct choice. For someone with no money or the knowledge of other resources, that candy bar could be all they eat today.