On Forgiveness

Lets talk, for a moment, about forgiveness. I posted (as my status today) the following few sentences:

Forgiveness, strange as it may sound, is not something we do for other people - it is not the forgetting or condoning of a past action. It is something we do for ourselves - it is the freedom of the spirit that results from refusing to continue to hurt over a past injury.

Forgiveness, for me, is an evolving concept; I am sometimes better and sometimes worse, I sometimes remember and I sometimes forget. Usually, it takes coming to a place where I am incredibly uncomfortable before I am truly able to let go.

As I understand it today, forgiveness must start with self. We must accept our humanity - accept our hurt - before we can even begin to forgive the other person.

An example then.

For the past few days, I have been in quite a considerable amount of upset about a business contact failing to get back to me regarding an issue that directly affects my housing situation. First, I have to accept that I am upset - this is different than the realization of upset (clearly, I am aware that I am unhappy) in that it requires the willingness to be upset, rather than change anything. For the most part, being upset is uncomfortable, and I would rather escape the emotion than truly experience it. When I am able to accept being upset, I can sit with it for a moment and see what it is that has me be this way in a way that is different from blame. Blame is counter productive - it is a defense mechanism rather than a path to emotional healing. When I am blaming, my mental conversations sound something like, "Okay, why are you upset?" "Because she didn't get back to me!" When I am looking at what truly has me bothered, things sound more like this: "Why are you upset?" "Not having this information threatens my sense of security. I'm scared."

It's okay to be scared. Knowing what I'm afraid of is the first place that I can begin with forgiveness of myself. Can I be okay with being afraid? Can I accept that I am not perfect? That I don't have all of the answers? That, every once in a while, I am going to feel like a three year old, without the luxury of a temper tantrum? This is the first place I can start. Yes - I can, moment by moment, forgive myself for being a human.

In my ability to forgive myself, I find that the upset and the hurt that I was accepting and forgiving (paradoxically) seem to melt away. I also (almost counter-intuitively) find the ability to (moment by moment) forgive the previously 'offending' party.

This forgiveness, as I mentioned early on, is distinctly different than forgetting or condoning the actions taken by the party. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than freeing yourself from the pain of your own humanity.

A Word About My Father

My father is an incredible man. It has taken me a lot longer to realize this than I wish it had, and I am glad that I know this now rather than later.

I don't always understand, or appreciate adequately, the way my dad pronounces, "I love you."

As I was growing up, it has sounded like, "Where are you going?" "Who are you with?" and "When are you going to be home?" It has often looked like criticism, sometimes like tough love, occasionally disguised itself as anger, and regularly rubbed me the wrong way because for almost 24 years, I have been listening with my ears instead of my heart.

My dad loves me so much.

He has put a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my mouth, band-aids on my knees, and displayed the kind of faith in me that most people only dream about.

When I was in college, my senior year, I had my thesis professor present me with a writing assignment of such a magnitude, to be completed in such a time constraint as I had never seen. I was utterly aghast. My dad said something to express his belief that I could get it done, and it came across like, "Quit bitching and do it." (I am sure that what he actually said was nothing close to that; I was so stressed out that he could have said, "What would you like for dinner?" and I would have heard, "Your life is fucked and you're going to die.") I screamed, "I HATE YOU!", got out of the car, slammed the door, and stalked off. It is the only time that I can remember ever saying those words to him, and I sincerely wish that I could travel back in time, shove them back into my mouth, chew them up, and spit them back into the depths of all things disgusting from which they came.

While the words that came out of my mouth said one thing, my heart said another. It said, "I am so worried that I am not the person you think I am that the only thing I can do right now is shove you away."

I don't know why it has to be so hard to be a parent. I don't know why being a kid means having to care so much about what your parents think. I just know that it is, and the best thing we can do on either side is try to be gentle with each other, and with ourselves.

He didn't yell at me, he didn't say, "I hate you too"; he didn't mope around in pain or sulk or give me the silent treatment (which I really couldn't blame him if he had). He let me know in his own way how much those words hurt, and I apologized, even though at the time I was still angry at him for believing in me at a time when I didn't believe in myself.

My dad was listening with his heart. He seems to have known something innately that all parents should know; children will forgive you almost anything, if you are there for them.

I think that bears repeating.

Children will forgive you almost anything, if you are there for them.

My dad has always been there for me, even when I had no idea that that's what he was doing, in the best ways he knows how.

There are a lot of things about my dad that I don't know, or don't understand - we can be going the same direction in a conversation and still inexplicably butt heads. A lot of it has to do with how similar we are; I find him to be lacking in tact, and myself to be lacking in oh-so-many-innumerable-things.

It simultaneously irks and amazes me.

The truth is, I am incredibly lucky to be like my dad.

I'll be more than blessed if I turn out to be only half of the person that he has shown himself to be.

P.S. I may type up the letter I gave him today, I may not. Either way, it made him cry. It was an awesome letter.