Forgiveness is the Royal Road I Just Don’t Want to Take

There’s nothing more difficult for me than to forgive. I think I’m owed something, so I hold the energy of that debt and do everything I can to get the other person to pay it.

I withold love, I gossip, I give the silent treatment (sometimes for years), I get on my high horse and delude myself by calling it the ‘high road’, and I just generally avoid doing the one thing that would actually solve the problem; forgive.

They say forgiveness is the royal road to Spirit. And it’s a road I just don’t want to take. I think that if I forgive I’ll lose something precious like respect, reputation, or maybe protection against getting hurt again. I especially don’t forgive because I’m afraid I’ll look like a fool if I do. Like if I forgive, people will know I’m gullible and they’ll see how desperately I want to be liked, loved, and even to love the person who hurt me. What’s more foolish than that? But what I miss is that not forgiving actually hurts more, even though I don’t want to admit it.

I won’t say I’m an expert in forgiveness, but the few times I’ve managed to forgive at least a little bit for at least a little while I’ve experienced a freedom like nothing else.

Forgiveness IS the royal road to Spirit, but that doesn’t mean it’s an obvious road. They say forgiveness is letting go of the hope for a better past. But how do I do that when the past is what made me? And when the harms from the past still hurt today? And when the people who hurt me never made it right?