Forgive? Never!

It's an interesting word, forgiveness.  It's an interesting concept.  Before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I had very little grasp of what it meant.  I had absolutely no concept that the magic of forgiveness is what it does to me.  While it can be a real gift, a real blessing to the person I'm forgiving there's no guarantee that it will change that person's life - the guarantee is that it will change my life.  This is the basis of A.A.'s action Steps: admitting my faults - my faults - and then admitting to another person where and when I've behaved poorly with no expectation that this will be well-received or that I will be forgiven by the other person.  The whole idea is to set myself free and to leave the reaction of the other person entirely up to them.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.

I guarantee very few things but here's a doozy and ironclad to boot - you are not going to be able to change the past.

It's the intention to forgive that's important.  It frees me from having to actually forgive someone in that moment.  That can be hard.  If I want to forgive someone who has harmed me - or who I think has harmed me - I can at least start with intending to forgive them and I have found that the forgiveness will come, the resentment will fade, the freedom will manifest itself.

A resentment is like eating poison and hoping the other person will die.

I have found this to be true - that there is no one alive today that I think owes me an apology.  I hold very few resentments and when I do I don't hold them for long.  This, naturally, has some nuance.  It doesn't always hold up under the withering light of inspection.  But mostly I'm at peace with other people.  And, critically, I don't have anyone that I need to apologize to today.  When I fuck up I take care of it, right then, right there, stat.  I cannot abide with that feeling of guilt.

Screw Guilt.

Forgive is a word that arose in the 5th century or so in England.  So not that ancient a word.  Maybe we knew how to do it and what it meant intuitively but the concrete concept is not that old.  The Biblical concept is to release, pardon, or forgive a debt.

Forgive:  To forgive means to stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone who has done something wrong, choosing to let go of the desire for punishment or revenge; it is a persona choice to release negative feelings, rather than a requirement to forget, excuse, or reconcile.

 A true apology is a repair process; it requires taking total responsibility for a mistake, acknowledging the pain caused to the other person, felling sincere regret, and committing to changed behavior so the action is not repeated.