A man languishes on the couch--for days. He's listless, riddled by chronic pain. Everything hurts. Mentally, he's been depressed for months. He's on sick leave from work, and doesn't know when or if he'll ever return. He's all bound up in anger, bitterness, remorse--a relationship with a family member broke down, and ended in hostility; things were said that shouldn't have. The man has been angry ever since--can't sleep, can't eat, can't work. His life is closing in on him. Why is he feeling so bad? Why is his life going down the toilet when the family member is still attending all the family parties, Facebooking his Caribbean vacations, and appearing like the father of the century? The anger burns.
Here's how to make a monkey trap: take a coconut, cut a hole in it--just big enough for a monkey to stick its hand in. Tie the trap to a tree, and wait. Here's what you'll notice: a monkey will smell the coconut in the trap, stick its hand in the hole and grab a handful of delicious pulp. But, when it attempts to pull its hand out, it gets stuck--the hole is only big enough for a hand, not a fist. As the hunters are storming after it wielding spears, the monkey is trapped. All it has to do is let go of the coconut, and pull its hand free.
Forgiveness is an easy thing to talk about, but its exceptionally difficult to do. When we do not forgive, when we hold grudges against others, we suffer mentally and physically. According to Dr. Karen Swartz of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorder Clinic, chronic anger can put you into a fight or flight response, which can lead to numerous physical ailments: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and rapid heart beat; and these increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and depression. There's a lot of research being done on the importance of how we control our thoughts. When we are in toxic thinking--holding grudges, staying angry, thinking bitterly about someone--our whole being is impacted. When, however, we let go of toxic thinking and embrace the errors of others and find ways to reconcile, we can be freed from mental and even physical toxicity.
What do you have to do to forgive? Here are a few things to think about:
1. Forgiveness is a matter of the heart: When we think with our mind, we think in analytical terms. We think about pros and cons, checks and balances, and cost benefit analysis. When someone offends us, we hold it in our minds: we replay the incident(s), and set up courts of law in our imaginations taking the role of the prosecuting attorney. But, when we think with our hearts, when we listen to our hearts, we experience something else: the heart wants communion with others; the heart wants to experience joy; the heart wants to childishly (or child-like-ly) forgive, the heart wants to trust. Forgiveness first and foremost is a matter of the heart; and until you look into your heart and find what it wants, you'll never be able to forgive.
2. Forgiveness takes humility: It's hard to admit to being wrong by being in the right. It's difficult to swallow what you feel the other deserves and embrace them anyway. It takes tremendous courage to give someone a second, third, umpteenth chance when you've been hurt so often before. It takes humbling yourself, swallowing your pride, and reconciling.
3. Ask forgiveness yourself: One of the big problems with finding forgiveness is we think we're innocent; and when the other shifts blame to us, we become defensive--we dig our heels in deeper into resentment and don't let go. But what if you approach the person whose done you wrong willing to admit your own wrong? What if you lower yourself to the person who's wronged you--or you feel has wronged you--and shift the blame to yourself? It's often that conflicts take two to tango. Admitting you were just as wrong in the tango can go a long way to releasing resentment and can quicken the healing process.
4. Seek help from others: Often we dwell alone in our resentment. We don't know how to go about the process of forgiveness, and are thus impeded further from entering into it, which drives us back into dwelling alone in resentment. Seeking out someone you trust to talk to about the situation is important. Seeing a therapist or a wise friend can help you bounce your feelings off someone else, and even put a plan together for how you are going to forgive the other. This takes vulnerability, so it's important you are careful with whom you trust in this regard.
5. Don't expect a particular outcome: Just because you choose to forgive someone, doesn't necessitate that all will be well with that person--all you're ensuring is you are no longer going to hold onto the resentment and anger. In fact, it could be that the person continues to hurt you, or refuses to re-enter the relationship, or even ridicules you for letting go. It could be that healing comes when you leave the situation or create distance or boundaries between you and other. Having a good therapist, depending on the intensity or complexity of the relationship, could be very helpful. You can choose to forgive, but you can't force the other to choose to forgive.
6. Remember your own forgiveness: We all hurt people at one time or another. We have all faced those times when we were recipients of forgiveness. We've all been forgiven. This should give us pause: How can we refuse to forgive the other when we have been forgiven? How can we withhold forgiveness from someone else, when others haven't withheld it from us? Knowing you've been forgiven can open the door to your own desire to forgive.
Let's get back to the man. As he's languishing on the couch, he watches a talk by a woman, a neuroscientist, who shows images of a brain in a state of forgiveness versus that of one in resentment. He hears about the health ramifications of resentment, which explains his seemingly deathly illness. He knows what he has to do. He looks in his heart: it wants to forgive, it wants to trust, it wants to reach out to the other let go of the past--even reconcile. He realizes he doesn't' have to live in the anger anymore. He makes a decision for reconciliation. The moment he does, the moment he chooses forgiveness, he begins to feel better. He even finds within his heart compassion and empathy for the other--he sees the other as a person, just like him, with stresses, pressures, vulnerabilities, brokenness.
He forgives.
Within a day, he's off the couch; within a week, he's back to work; and that Easter, he and the family member share the first hug in years. His heart is full, soft, healed.
This is forgiveness.
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