Sometimes the hardest thing you can do is to forgive someone who doesn’t care if you do so or not. I would venture to say that everyone of us has experienced this feeling at some point in our lives. The sting of someone’s apathy can reopen our deepest wounds dredging up latent insecurities we thought we long overcame. To forgive someone who neither cares for it or needs it is a tricky thing. Sometimes we mimic their apathy thinking we’ve let something go when in fact we’ve simply numbed ourselves.
To admit to ourselves that we’ve been hurt can be a humiliating experience. Acknowledging the shame, trauma or rejection, can easily start us down a path of self loathing. Sometimes we will tell ourselves that we deserve it as a way to cope with the pain. Forgiveness is the fine balancing act of acknowledging how someone has wounded us while maintaining our sense of dignity and self worth. Only a person who recognizes their own value can have the strength to extend forgiveness.
After we experience any type of hurt or trauma, something will inevitably change within us. We can choose what that change will be. Writing this song was my way of trying to find out what kind of person I would become. I could choose to be cruel, unfeeling, and resentful, or I could begin the process of rebirth into someone wiser, kinder and more understanding. Forgiveness takes courage, it takes effort and it takes compassion. Sometimes simply trying to understand why a person did what they did can be the first step in humanizing them. If we can respond to the violence done against our souls with kindness, that is when I believe we are closest to the divine.
Forgiveness is not accepting wrong as right. It is accepting that wrong was done and that we do not have to be bound by its shackles. And often it takes time to fully manifest itself. So be patient with yourselves as you work out forgiveness in your own lives. Do not be embarassed by your pain.
Some people say unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. I tend to disagree with that notion. I think unforgiveness is drinking the poison that the other person already drank. And forgiveness could heal them both.