Forgiveness

I would like to take a moment today to talk about the importance of forgiveness. This is something I've recently talked with two of my friends about, so I thought maybe it was something that a lot of people were struggling with.

Forgiveness is a difficult thing to tackle. Almost everyone has someone in their lives that they haven't forgiven. When that happens, we tend to dwell and obsess and our anger grows and makes us feel generally pretty shitty, which ultimately hurts us more than them!

Now at this point, it would be super easy for me to say "so just forgive them and everything will be hunky dory" but it's just not that simple.

I feel like it's morning and my writing is going in circles and I'm not making any sense.

Ok, let me give an example:

I'm walking with a friend and he has this person he hates and believes to be evil and who fucked up his life and he still gets upset and harbors anger even though it's been 2 years. It was getting to the point where it was interfering with his quality of life and he came to me to talk. He asked me HOW I was able to forgive certain people in my past who did a considerable amount of damage to my well being. HOW was I able to find that particular pocket of peace?

Ya'll are going to be angry when I say this, but there is no how. You just do. You just reach the point where it is ok and you understand that everyone makes mistakes and everyone has hard times and there are no bad people, just people in bad situations who made bad decisions.

Now here's the twist:

The person many of us are not forgiving is (drum-roll please) OURSELVES! What say whaaaaat?!?!?! Yup, this one I have more experience with than I'd like to admit and this one we CAN control.

I was talking to a different friend and he was talking about how every time he messed up he beat himself up. He was stuck in this cycle of messing up, dwelling on the past, feeling crappy, and then messing up again. This is a common cycle and one I know all too well with eating and bingeing and purging and restricting and exercising.

Remember guys, we are human. We WILL screw up, ok? It is GOING to happen. The trick is to recognize this, forgive ourselves, keep our mind in the present and not in the past, and put all of our energy into making this moment, right here, right now, the best we can for ourselves, for those we love, and for our recovery.

Only then can we truly make small steps, large steps, and leaps and bounds forward. You must forgive the past to find peace and move on to live wholly in the present.

So try it. Forgive someone today =)