Finding forgiveness is not always easy. It can be enormously challenging to forgive someone who has hurt you in some way, especially if the pain they caused was violent and/or intentional. Offering forgiveness to a person who went out of their way to cause you some form of harm, or having to forgive someone that harmed someone you love, seems next to impossible. It certainly is not my forte. In fact, hurting the people I love will land you in my Book of Villains much faster than hurting me. Albeit usually to my own detriment. I can’t properly recall how often I have harbored an intense ire for someone based on a transgression which that someone committed against my friend, only to have my friend decide to embrace the spirit of forgiving and forgetting. Great for my friend, but when I’ve committed myself to despising someone for all eternity it’s not always so easy to pump the brakes.

And I’m sorry, but forgiving and forgetting does not always make me feel better. Sometimes it just makes me feel like a quitter. Because I am not Jesus, or Buddha or Lao Tse, or any of those blokes that embodied the spirit of forgiving and moving on. I’m not convinced that everyone deserves to be forgiven. Some people are just flat out rotten human beings, and will, in fact, take forgiveness to mean that their behavior is acceptable. I understand that we all have our rotten moments, and that the aforementioned guru-types would urge us toward seeing one another’s humanity; I am not talking about rotten moments. I’m talking about those folks who are so rotten that one may question whether or not they possess any humanity to be seen.

But even in these instances, isn’t it better to forgive anyway? Perhaps some people are born truly “wrong,” for lack of a better term, and they live to hurt others; serial killers, sex traffickers, oligarchs. Those are kind of extreme situations. But there are times when we come across someone who is “wrong” in a much less dramatic way. Someone who thrives on the misfortunes of others, or, at the very least, seems to not give a rat’s ass about it. Dr. Robert Enright of the University of Wisconsin, who began the International Forgiveness Institute (yes, it’s a real thing. And that’s not a snarky jab – I think it’s fabulous that such a place exists), suggests that even in extreme situations, with the right tools and commitment, forgiveness can be achieved. Moreover, learning to forgive can be as healing (if not more so), than the forgiveness itself. Seems as good a reason as any to give it a whirl.

Especially considering that forgiving, it turns out, does not require forgetting. The forgetting is a religious addendum. Many of the “forgiveness experts” that I read (yep, also a real thing, and frankly sad that there are so few of them), say that it’s the “forget” part of the phrase that leads people to believe that forgiveness is akin to condoning lousy behavior. Dr. Frederic Luskin, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project (need I say it?), proposes something very different: that forgiveness is not about the person being forgiven, it is about the one forgiving.

No one has to forgive—forgiveness is a choice. Forgiveness means that we release our suffering over difficult situations; it does not mean we have to put ourselves back into hurtful situations. Forgiveness means that even though what happened is not okay, you can move on and make peace for yourself.

Frederic Luskin

Making “peace for yourself,” allows you to open up space for things that really matter. If you haven’t experienced the immediate lightening of spirit that occurs when you truly let something go, I’m telling you, give it a shot. I’d venture to guess it will make you want to repeat the process.

Clearly, I’m no Dr. Luskin – I have no empirical evidence for the benefits of forgiveness, nor for the reasons why extending that forgiveness can feel so daunting. I can say that the reason forgiveness is often difficult for me, is because it forces me to critically examine the situation, including examining the reasons that I was hurt in the first place. And it sometimes forces me to acknowledge that forgiveness is not what needs to be given, it’s what needs to be asked. Because I was actually the one being a dick. Not intentionally (usually); most of the time it boils down to a big miscommunication. Which, in turn, usually leads to an amusing story down the road. Occasionally, however, it leads to me being told that I can take my apology and shove it.

Which leads to the real crux of all this. Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself. Perhaps your rotten moment was extra rotten. Perhaps, intentionally or otherwise, your rotten moment really crushed someone’s soul. Perhaps you’re wondering if you are one of the rotten types I mentioned previously, the ones that seem like they don’t deserve forgiveness. If you’re even considering that possibility, let me assure you, you are not one of those types. The truly rotten never think they are rotten. In my experience, most of the truly rotten think they are God’s gift. Save for the ones that fancy themselves gods in their own rite.

_{Photo: Bailey Burton on Unsplash}