Forgiveness. We think that we know what it means. Forgiveness. One word represents the tidal wave that is time, encompassing past, present, and future. It was just Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when friends and family are asking each other for one thing: forgiveness. We always answer with the same “Yes, yes, of course” or “You know that you never did anything to me.” But did we actually forgive?
Then there are the people who don’t ask for forgiveness, though you wish they would. And there are the people whom you don’t know whether you can forgive, even if they did ask. Those are the people we feel negatively impacted our lives. Hurt us. We all have those experiences. But the thing about forgiveness is it only has one face. It’s the same words in every situation, no matter the situation. Forgiveness is an ending - and it’s a beginning. But how do we do it? It’s easy to say that you forgive. It’s easy to say that you want to. But it’s not so easy to let go of the past, of the hurt that now defines a piece of your heart. The answer to how to forgive is actually simple. Once we know the secret, we can forgive at the flick of a wrist.
To find out how to forgive, we first have to discuss the concept of bechira, free will, choice. Sometimes we use bechira to kick ourselves. We bully ourselves for not having made the right choice when we had the opportunity to. But this is wrong, because there is not always a 50 percent chance that you will make the right choice and a 50 percent chance that you will make the wrong one. Bechira is based on learned patterns and experiences. Bechira is based on probability. You can predict that someone who has woken up at 8:00 a.m. every day for the past 50 years to smoke a pack of cigarettes will do it again tomorrow. Does he have the choice not to? Yup. Is there a chance that tomorrow, he won’t? Yup. But what is the probability? Pretty low. This person lacks the capacity to do anything differently. Now look at the people in your life whom you have trouble forgiving. When they hurt you, did they want to? Was it about you, or are they themselves hurting? Here is the truth. At the time they hurt you, they did not have the capacity to choose differently.
You see, we even have bechira over our bechira. We have the ability to change the probability that we are going to make the same mistakes tomorrow. But it’s hard. It requires change. First, though, it requires the realization that what you are doing is wrong. That in itself is a slowly-fought battle. Swimming against the current is difficult, and it all starts with an arm digging into the water, defying nature when every other force is pushing in the opposite direction. And the only force pushing someone toward the desired destination is the one that lives within him or her. So, when that person hurt you, kept hurting you, for however long – was it about you? Or, did he or she just not have the capacity to act differently? To say or do the right thing, the harder thing? Because life is beautiful, but it includes pain, pain that people don’t want to feel. To change the probability, it takes a person who has struggled and self-evaluated enough to feel the pain in one’s past and present and utilize it to become stronger. Though you may have done so, you can feel for others who have not.
Now, you may hope that others who hurt you will start changing the probability – that they will start having bechira over their bechira. But, you won’t be angry with them anymore. For comparison’s sake (and not because I’m saying that the ones who hurt you are like dogs), you can’t be angry at a dog for walking on four legs. It always does that. It’s used to doing that. Can it walk on two legs? Sure. But it’s uncomfortable. So, you can hope that others start walking on two legs, but you won’t be angry at them for not doing so all the time, because that’s simply not within their capacity. The probability that they would do or say anything other than what they have done or said is slim. You hope that it changes. You pray that it does. But at that moment, in that instant, you. You…are…free. Free to let go of the pain, the anger. Free to move on. Free to forgive. The insults, the hurtful actions, they were not about you. They weren’t true. They were about another person’s pain and inability to cope with it.
Let’s return to the essence of forgiveness. As stated above, forgiveness only has one face, even if the situation doesn’t involve another person. Sometimes the person you need to forgive… is yourself. Sometimes we think back to how we treated others or how we treated ourselves, and we wonder, how could I? We analyze the past a thousand times and wonder how we could have acted or reacted the way that we did. You will only forgive yourself when you realize that, at that time, in that situation, including every event that led up to it, you lacked the capacity to do anything differently. Did you have the ability? Yes. Was there a chance? You bet. What was the probability? Low.
But here is what you did. You experienced the painful results and you began to change the probability. So now you’re a better person. Now you can’t imagine ever making some of the mistakes that you did then. Because you improved the probability that you would do right by others and by yourself. And it was hard. It was challenging. The next challenge is forgiving yourself for the past and accepting that at the time, you weren’t strong enough to make the right choice or to even recognize it.
If you had been strong enough to make the right decision, you would have been an anomaly, because behavior is a result. How could you have treated others any differently than how it was modeled for you? How could you have treated yourself any differently than how you grew up being treated? No, it wasn’t within your capacity. You accept it. You forgive it. And you take pride in who you are now and in who you are going to be. Now you’re the warrior who walks the earth with a sword of experience in hand and the knowledge that you can fight the probability: fight the current, forgive others, forgive yourself, and live.
There is a saying that you cannot start a new chapter if you keep reading the last one. I suggest that you read that last chapter only one more time. Take what you can from it – all the pain, the strength, the learning experiences that you can glean. Feel it all, whether it involves forgiving others, forgiving yourself, or both. Forgiveness only has one face: yours.
This article is dedicated to my cousin, Efriam Carmel, z”l, grandson of Rabbi Aryeh Walker Levin, and devoted husband, father, talmid chacham, and soldier of the Israeli army. Your name will live on and continue to inspire Klal Yisrael.
