Is there power in forgiveness

People are quick to tell you – forgive and forget. It is an old adage. However, personally, I battle with this. 

When so many people seem to do you wrong, when so many people seem out to hurt you, I like to hold on to the disappointment. 

So that when I see said person, it will be fresh at the top of my memory exactly how this person betrayed my trust. Dates and time will be a little foggy, but the Act itself will be vivid.

Why would I want to hold on to these acts? Why would I want to remember how I have been betrayed, let down, misused? I don’t have the answer to this, perhaps it has to do with continually giving too much. Never asking why, just always doing. Assisting. Helping. Sacrificing. I think that holding on to this record of wrong-doings helps me to remember that I have done my share. 

I have assisted friends, family members, colleagues, much more than my fair share. It helps me to remember that I am a good person, after all look at all I have done!

However, one of my mentors recently pointed out to me how heavy my burden is, if I insist on carrying everybody’s wrongdoings around with me. My bag just expands and expands as I open it wider and wider and pack everybody’s trespasses against me into it. My back nearly caving under the weight, but very determined to lug it around, lest I forget what somebody did against me in 1995. She encouraged me to let it go, to give each person what belongs to them. To unpack it, and leave each item at the feet of those it belonged to, as it no longer belonged to me, and has never served me.

I duly did this, in my mind, and in my soul, consciously severing the ties that bound me to these people. Letting go of the anger and resentment that I felt. It really did help me when I realised that these people had not done these things on purpose. They had not deliberately wanted to be nasty to me. A lot of the actions could not even be remembered by the perpetrators and yet here I was, silently planning their demise. 

At nobody’s detriment but my own. Having that cancer, that anger, that hatred inside me every day only hurt me. It brought MY energy down, shifted my space in the universe. Do not give power to the negative. Let it go. Embrace the positive, embrace forgiveness, embrace walking into the future weightless.

And be kind to one another.