You Can Give Things Up, Or You Can Wait Until They Give You Up

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. -Oscar Wilde

Unconditional Forgiveness

Yesterday I had the chance to meet up with one of my mentors and great friend of mine and he inspired me to write on a very important and underrated topic: the one of Forgiveness.

To forgive is to choose the healing path.

Forgiveness includes the Self as well. In fact, it starts with the Self. While it’s essential to forgive others who have harmed us, it’s very important not to forget to forgive ourselves as well. Most people could agree that they are their most harsh critics. They are so strict with themselves, for different reasons. They don’t allow themselves room for mistakes. When they do fuck up, they punish their own person. Yet doing so only harms the soul of the person who inflicts such pain and pressure onto their selves.

Many walk around with tons of resentments buried deep within their unconscious. Since the hatred is hidden below the surface, they may think that they are at peace with who they are and with others. Yet they are only fooling themselves.

All it takes is one single event to rub an old unhealed wound, and suddenly, the unconscious plays out the one song we once have taught ourselves to love to hate. And then here we are, losing our cool. Acting upon our immediate emotions. Projecting our own suffering onto the person who
"awoke " the demon sleeping in us. Perhaps going as far as to blame them for creating such a mess. But the truth is that the chaos was already simmering inside of our souls.

Carrying resentments around is one tough job. It requires a lot of energy. Perhaps, energy that we could put into healing outlets.
Why do we consciously – or unconsciously choose to make ourselves suffer?
Maybe it’s the love and hate relationship we cultivate with pain.

We may on some level repel it, but we still look out for it. He’s like that toxic ex. You know he’s danger, but you love the familiarity of such danger.
We could choose right now to let go of all the toxicity we hold onto.
We could choose at this moment to fill our hearts with self-compassion.
To purify our soul from every impurity that has ever entered it.

There’s one powerful exercise I did a year ago.

It consists of writing letters to the people who have harmed us. In each of those letters, we let everything out of our system. The untold words, emotions, feelings. We can express how we wish this person would have treated us. There’s no rules. You let everything that comes to mind exit your being. And at the end, the most important part of the exercise, is to let that or these individuals know that you forgive them. Notice that if you find yourself incapable of giving them your forgiveness, it may be a sign that more time and work needs to be put in this process.

There's no rush. We ought to be gentle with ourselves. Forgiving the ones who have wronged us can be extremely hard. Remember that by choosing to not forgive someone, we are forever tying ourselves to them in our own heart.
Healing is an ever ending process. What matters the most is to start this all too important journey.