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SELF FORGIVENESS
I have debated posted this but thought if it helps one person then it is worth it. I am still fearful of getting into how to suck eggs or being prescriptive with advice. I will manage that by keeping this to being a brief blog. There is no religious angle to the following. The topic of self-forgiveness has been on my mind as I have had some time on my hands to think.
I have passed the age of 50. The older you get the more memories you have. Some good. Some you remonstrate yourself about.
This post is about how to get past remonstrating yourself for things that happened long ago.
First suggestion, Is that if the person concerned is still in your life, try bringing up the incident up from 30 years ago especially if it is a straight apology from you to them. I did this recently over a friend’s bike I had needlessly broken over 40 years ago. The friend is still in my life and gave me a hearing and forgave me. He is a father now so has a father’s perspective. He told me I had just been a child and that children do silly things.
Thing is I had walked around with that on my conscience for 43 years. I didn’t think about it every day. I didn’t think about it every year. Sometimes 5 years would go by without thinking about it. But part of my brain was holding on to that.
I recently apologised to several people for things from a long time ago.
My second suggestion is to give to charity any ill-gotten gains you acquired or damages you caused someone else that will be too hard to repay. Sometimes a charity I give to routinely gets very specific amounts from me and they must wonder what is happening.
I knew my friend wouldn’t accept repayment for the damage I did to his bike, and I also felt that would be seen as paying him off and downgrading his apology acceptance which came from the bottom of his heart and was freely given. So donated what I thought the cost of the bike repairs would have come to plus 40 years of interest to charity.
Afterwards then had a revelation of sorts, and this thought is my third and final suggestion. Some of the things I remonstrate myself is telling myself off for not being more assertive or telling someone off when I had been the victim in the past. Suddenly have decided or realised not to do that. I was the victim. You were the victim for your similar memory. Why should the onus be on me, when I was caught unawares and not expecting the situation to do something amazing and protect myself better. The onus was on the attacker not to have said those things. And unless they are a psychopath at some point they will have to confront their own conscience about doing that. There will be an accounting for them and I should not blame myself for not defending myself better.
As a result I have made that decision and immediately let go of about 5 or 6 incidents over the past 30 years.
After going through this process am finding myself less likely to spend hours thinking by myself. Am more in the moment. And more present.
All advice or guidelines break down with extreme examples so somethings are a lot harder to move on from than others. On this note, if you have a really extreme example don’t feel obliged to share it as I doubt the rest of us will have any advice on how to solve an extreme example.
A main reason had the courage to post this blog post is that the members of this web site are very mature. You will have your own thoughts on the importance of self-forgiveness I would love to hear.
Thanks