One of the most insurmountable obstacles to forgiveness is the assumption that it entails accepting the blame ourselves. We find it impossible to absolve someone’s actions because whether we’re consciously aware of it or not there’s the felt sense that if they’re not at fault, then surely we must be. But for one caveat this assumption is true—and rather than prevent us from granting forgiveness it should be the very reason why we give it.
The caveat is that there is a big difference between blame and responsibility. Blame means something is someone’s fault. Responsibility means something is within someone’s power. There is no wrong-making in responsibility—no blame, shame, or fault—just the recognition that whatever we’re responsible for is under our control. Fault defeats, responsibility gives ownership.
Why then is the resistance to assuming responsibility that’s on the other side of forgiveness self-defeating? Because unless we’re responsible, we’re at the effect of circumstances. We’re victims. The leaves that the wind is blowing rather than the wind itself.
I know from personal experience how strong, almost visceral the resistance to extending love to someone who has hurt us can be. There’s a sense that we betray, abandon, disrespect ourselves in doing so. Which also is likely what we’re unable to forgive the other person for. In other words, not only did they hurt us, but we’re now hurting us by letting them off the hook and giving them the love they don’t deserve and took away from us.
But the thing is, when we keep someone on the hook, we are the one hanging on it: For three reasons:
It’s rather audacious to think that we know how life should be. Life is. It does what it does. People are. They act as they act. We can’t control either. What we can control is how we let it all affect us. This is the only thing we can control and the most important one to control, for it is what creates our experience—yet it’s what we most resist taking control over.
We’re under the force of the emotion we’re holding onto. Whether we’re hurt, angry, resentful, or disappointed—that emotion has impact over us. It affects our thoughts, feelings, moods, decisions. When we hold onto the hurt that someone has caused us, we are under control rather than in control. Our emotional and psychological well-being is in the grip of the emotion we haven’t released.
We let someone else dictate the terms on which we engage with life, rather than proactively decide how we want to show up. To create rather than react to life is to be responsible for the values and qualities we uphold. And to have full ownership is to uphold them not when people act in accordance with our preferences, but regardless of how they act. This often is misinterpreted as a pathetic response to life, when in fact it’s the utmost creative force we could ever have.
None of this is to condone people’s behaviour. But there is power in recognising that anger hurts the angry and resentment hurts the resentful. It is not other person that we deprive from forgiveness when we don’t grant it, it is ourselves. Because often, it is the self-judgement associated with having been a person who got hurt, betrayed, misled that prevents us from forgiving. Essentially, on the deepest level, it’s ourselves that we’re unable to forgive.
But whether we blame the other person or ourselves, wrong-making makes victims out of us and strips us out of power, which ironically is what we believe we’re holding onto when we refuse to forgive. True power is in knowing what we’re powerless over.