Forgiveness is a Selfish Act

Forgiveness is a Selfish Act

Forgiveness is primarily a selfish act.  This spiritual principle encourages selfishness.  We forgive others of their “trespasses against us” to free ourselves from the bondage of bitterness, resentment and strife.  When our hearts feel these emotions, we do not experience joy in life.  Nursing negative emotions requires a tremendous amount of mental energy.  Vengeance undermines our ability to pursue dreams and goals.  It is therefore in our best interest to “forgive and forget.”

Forgiveness liberates us from personal prisons where we thirst for punishment and revenge.  As we “play God” desiring that those who harm us are justly paid for their deeds, we lengthen the sentence of our mental and emotional incarceration.  If we genuinely believe in the universal principle of reciprocity, i.e., people essentially reap what they sow, we leave their punishment to a higher and more perfect authority.  Finding the wherewithal to forgive frees us to move on to more important things in our lives.

Holding grudges is simply silly as months and years pass.  All we really have are memories of the grudge that keeps burning.  We fail to recall vividly the circumstances that lead to our resentment.  Details are lost; the motives, intentions and actions of all participants are never fully known.  As a consequence, we burn in anger over an incident about which we remember very little.  How ridiculous!  Interestingly, I know a guy who kept a resentment list of some 260 people.  He remembered very specific dates, times and multiple ways in which he thought all of these people had offended him.  Consider the waste of memory and mental energy.  This guy could have better utilized the fires of imagination and discipline.  What a waste!

Should we forgive and forget?  Yes, most definitely!  As we remember, we stoke the flames of resentment and revenge.  Excessive sharing of hurtful experiences causes us to relive them.  We further descend into the muck and mire of wasteful emotions.  However, it is preferable to learn from our past.  People who have harmed us inevitably teach us a lot about human nature.  They make us more discerning and selective about the people with whom we associate.  Should we fail to forget those unfortunate experiences, we deprive ourselves of future relationships with interesting and colorful people because we view everyone through the prism of an unfortunate past.

We forgive regardless of the actions and emotions of those persons who injure us.  It is fallacious to define a set of conditions these people must meet in order to obtain our forgiveness.  Whereas forgiveness is a selfish act, it requires a proactive decision on our behalf.  We forgive without consideration to the behavior of our debtors.  Otherwise, we continue to empower them to affect our emotions, thoughts and lives.  It would be nice if they acquire the maturity and civility to ask for our forgiveness with full acknowledgement of the ways in which they hurt us.  Even if they never come, we still forgive them.

Forgiveness yields forgiveness.  Since we have also wronged others and stand in need of their forgiveness, we are able to forgive those who have “trespassed against us.”  It is very hard to be on the losing end of unrequited love.  The objects of our affections compound our burden when they float freely with our feelings.  The other side of that dilemma is not any more enjoyable.  It is hard to ask someone’s forgiveness when you have built your self-esteem at his or her expense.  Having to ask due to immaturity and ignorance enables us to extend to others the same forgiveness we seek.

There is freedom in forgiveness.  Failure to forgive perpetually imprisons us to useless emotions.  It hinders our learning from all of our experiences.  We transform failures and missteps into new opportunities of spiritual growth and personal development.  We find a new liberty to actualize our God given talents and natural endowments.  We also discover love, peace and joy that previously eluded us.  Refusal to forgive others of their wrong deeds will only keep the doors to those new vistas closed.  Let yourself out of prison and enjoy the blissful and selfish freedom that comes from forgiveness!