Reading: The Importance of Forgiveness

A lot of people take forgiveness for granted. Whenever forgiving someone is brought up, they may think, “well yeah, I forgive people all the time”, but the truth is they aren’t recognizing those grudges that they hold in their heart.

Giving and receiving forgiveness are different things, but give us similar results. As a result of giving or receiving forgiveness a person may feel grateful, empowered, motivated, and thankful.

Let’s talk about the forgiving individual for a moment, and why it’s so important to put aside the pride that becomes a barrier and stops us from being a forgiving person.

The nature of forgiveness is to muster up whatever compassion you have left for the person that has wronged you. If you cannot do this — if you cannot be compassionate toward that individual, anger may eat away at you and then give birth to bitterness.

If you’ve ever experienced bitterness and resentment, then you know that it is not something worth carrying around all the time. It becomes a heavy burden that weighs us down and isolates us. Forgiveness takes this away. Forgiveness kills bitterness and resentment.

Forgiving someone else is freeing. It allows us to break those chains of thought that have been weighing us down. If you are not able to forgive someone, it forever becomes something that you cannot bear. You will not be able to think of that person or that particular circumstance the same again. When it does come to mind, it becomes paralyzing.

I’ve heard a lot of people say, “I always forgive but I don’t ever forget”. To me, that says they don’t always forgive. There’s an unending burden dwelling inside them. They’ve been scarred by something and have not let go of that hurt that they have experienced. If they fully forgave the offender, they would be free of that burden. I’ve come up with a few things that I believe can help anyone become better at forgiving and forgetting.

1. Put yourself aside

Truthfully, if you cannot get over your own pride, you will never be able to fully forgive anyone for anything. You have to be able to push aside whatever pride, anger, resentment, bitterness, or hate is left inside you to accept the person that has hurt you. You will not have access to the compassion inside you if you cannot get rid of these walls that have been strongly built around your heart.

It’s always important to take care of yourself, but convincing yourself that not forgiving someone is the way to do that, is a lie. The only way to feel free from those scars, is by openly admitting to yourself that we are all imperfect people who become selfish sometimes. We all need forgiveness at some point. We all hurt other people, but the reason we’re able to maintain the very important relationships in our lives is because of forgiveness.

2. Look in the mirror

The best way to understand how a person that hurt you feels is by looking in the mirror and evaluating your own faults and offenses. We all have them and we’ve all hurt someone in one way or another. Perhaps the way to open up yourself to forgiving someone else is by looking inward first. Think about a time when you needed the forgiveness of someone else to be freed from the scar that you left.

If we’re able to look inward and recognize times that we needed forgiveness to move on, we’ll be able to see the value in forgiving another individual. Looking inward will also help us practice the skill of empathy. If we can evaluate ourselves more often, we’ll be more careful of our own approach to someone else because we ultimately know what it feels like to be hurt. We can place ourselves in their shoes and understand the value of forgiveness better.

3. Love more

The quickest way to a more peaceful world is to love other people more. I’m not talking about romantic love, obviously. I’m talking about serving others, listening instead of talking, and forgiving other’s faults. I get it, we’re not perfect, but the old saying, “practice makes perfect”, really does apply.

Imagine if we were all working on these skills at the same time — we practiced listening more, being less selfish, doing things for other people, etc. We would have an abundance of forgiveness (or perhaps we wouldn’t need as much forgiveness). The point is, life would seem to be a lot easier if everyone were able to show a bit more love.

Forgiveness effect

I remember reading a story about Warrick Dunn. He’s a former NFL running back and a guy who suffered a tragedy when he was 18 years old. His mother was murdered when she was off-duty. She was a police officer. Warrick took this unimaginable tragedy and used it for good. His mother was a single parent who had to raise her children by herself. When Warrick lost his mother, he became the head of the household and knew that he had to ultimately be the example.

Warrick started his own charity his rookie year in the NFL. The charity gives homes to single-parent families. The inspiration for this charity was Warrick’s mother. He wanted to give back to his community and instill the importance of support in a neighborhood. Warrick has stated in an interview that he doesn’t know if the charity would have existed if he did not suffer this tragedy.

In the same interview, Warrick explains that he visited his mother’s killer in prison. He stated that he had to forgive him. He said it was a way to gain the power back from all those nights he spent crying himself to sleep at night. He couldn’t rest easy until he was able to set himself free in his own heart.

You see, lack of forgiveness is a prison. Warrick was a prisoner of that horrible situation until he was able to let go. The interviewer asks him, “you don’t want to go to the execution?” Warrick answered back, “no… I’m free”. You don’t have to meet your offender face-to-face just to forgive them. Forgiving them in your heart is just as effective if the sincerity is there.

Being able to forgive someone and use those experiences to make you a better human is invaluable. Don’t be afraid to forgive other people. If you refuse to forgive others, your heart can become hardened and you may push people away. Instead, allow yourself to continue to forgive. It may unlock a piece of you that can create something that other’s can benefit from in the future years to come.