the simple definition that I work with now is that forgiveness is the ability to make
peace
with the word “no.” that forgiveness is, and again, we’re looking at the universal
definition of
forgiveness, not “how do I get over what my mother-in-law did, or what this person
did?”
but
the elemental question inside all of these issues is “I didn’t get something I wanted.
I got no.”
“I wanted my partner to be faithful.
They were not faithful.
I got no.
I wanted somebody to tell
the truth.
They told a lie.
I got no.
I wanted to be loved as a child.
I wasn‘t in a way that I felt
good about.
I want the traffic to be empty, it's not empty.”
No, but it's so important to be able to understand the unitary experience of this, of objecting
to the way life is, and trying to substitute
the way I want it to be, and then getting upset when my substitution doesn’t take.
That the
essence of forgiveness is the ability to be resilient when things don’t go the way you
want.
It can
be in a memory, it can be in a current relationship, it can be in the past, it can be repetitive,
it can
be once, it can be from forty years ago.
Hey, we were in northern Ireland, we could be dealing
with things from four-hundred years ago, but the essence of it is, “I create a resentment
because
something is different than the picture that I have of how it should be.”
So, if my picture is that anybody who goes out with me, they stay faithful, and I
end up with, you know, a philanderer, than I had the word “no” given to me.
“I didn’t get what
I wanted.”
“If I had somebody who treats me differently, than I think I should, that I get ‘no’
to
what I wanted“- and essence of forgiveness is to be able to after grieving be at peace
with no,
be at peace with what is, be at peace with the vulnerability inherent in human life,
that we can’t
always make things the way we want, and be able to without prejudice lead our lives.
Like, it’s
the without prejudice part that informs forgiveness.
It's not that anybody “owes me,” and it's not
that I have to “pay this forward,” it's not that “my last partner was unkind to
me; I had to give my
new partner the third degree.”
The forgiveness is the lack of prejudice.
The open heartedness of the moving
forward.
It's an acceptance without prejudice.
It's not just that I accept it because life sucks, and
there’s nothing I can do about it- that may be true, but I accept it in a way that
I’m willing to
give the next moment a chance.
That’s the acceptance, “I’m willing to give the next moment a
chance.
I don‘t have to punish you because of what somebody else did.”
And it all is, another
way of putting this, is can I use resilience enough to be able to handle “no” when
it comes by
way?
Can I forgive whenever it is that caused me no, and can I forgive my unskillful responses
that might have intensified it, or made it last too long?
But it's all based on a very simple thing of
wanted “yes” and getting “no.”