Best-laid plans often go astray because we start out with a far too detailed and ambitious goal. Then when we don’t meet that expectation, we are deeply disappointed.
This year, I’m doing the opposite. I’m keeping my commitment to one simple, yet powerful one: Be forgiving.
To be clear, I do not mean forgiveness. That is a goal. Being forgiving is a state of mind and body—something we practice each moment with ourselves and with others. It softens us and leads us to a place of spaciousness, joy, and inner tranquility.
We’ve lost some of our ability to be forgiving of each other’s transgressions and instead, our society likes to punish people’s breakdowns. As an example, wouldn’t it have been better to ask Will Smith to do a public service announcement to kids about physical violence as opposed to abolishing him from attending the Oscars for a decade?
It seems that in some instances, being forgiving can garner more than ruthlessness when we see someone show a deeply unflattering side of themselves. Social media has created a resurgence of public shaming. What was once shaming in a coliseum in medieval times, social media takes public shaming and goes global with it. A cancel culture that seeks to isolate the “bad people” from mainstream society through public shaming may one day come for you.
Being forgiving takes courage. It forces us to see ourselves beyond ego—beyond right-doing and wrong-doing—and connects us back to our hearts (in French, courage is the word for heart). Once we move past ego, we can begin the process of releasing ourselves from the intergenerational trauma that binds our wounds together. We will finally be able to love each other more freely.
So, the next time you find yourself tempted to join in an online debate where people are moving far beyond healthy debate, ask yourself before you engage if you would say what you are about to say if the person was right in front of you. Perhaps we can all infuse a bit more of being forgiving into our culture again.
Stay true to you,
For more information, I encourage you to pick up my book, The Paper Tiger Syndrome, or sign up for notices when workshops will be available later this year.