Forgiveness

Welcome to the New Year, a time when we often find ourselves reviewing the previous year’s goals and resolutions. Some of us are probably generally satisfied with the accomplishments of some of those goals. Others may be disappointed with how things turned out. I wonder which group do you find yourself in?

I usually discover that the glass is half full – some of my ambitious goals and objectives were fulfilled, others were not. There are many reasons for this. One of the major reasons is simply that my goals were not as realistic as I thought they were. The unpredictability of life is certainly another reason – the lack of energy due to illness or the lack of time due to the sudden increase in work activity. And the final, perhaps the most important reason – some of the goals simply were not aligned with my values and highest aspirations.

These days I enjoy taking time to review the previous year’s events. I look at both, the achievements as well as the challenges. I used to be quite critical and judgmental when I noticed some supposedly important goal was not achieved – today I tend to look at those as learning opportunities. After all, being imperfect allows me to set new goals. It allows me to continue developing and growing in all important areas of my life. How lucky, that I am still so flawed!

Setting the goals or resolutions for each year, I try to make sure they come from what I truly believe in – not from what the society deems important. If you have been reading this blog, you have probably noticed a theme of not caring about the superficial things that much. My values are rooted in care and kindness, compassion and wisdom, love and connection. I believe that these are the core needs for all of us – we are just not always using the same wise ways of achieving them.

So, while the need for human connection drives me to organize women meetups, some people spend hours in the gym to become “attractive” enough to find someone special. While I am teaching mindfulness to inspire more self-care and balance for myself and others, some of my friends are climbing the career ladder in promise of increased salaries that should bring them more freedom, eventually. None of these choices are better than others – we just try to satisfy our basic needs in different ways. We do what we believe is for the best, with the knowledge we have at the time.

At this point, you might be wondering why the title for this blog post is “forgiveness”. It can take a long time to realize that something we did in the past was not very smart. We might have done something repeatedly despite getting the same poor results. For me, trying to lose weight and become thin to fit in the socially accepted attractiveness mold was that one thing I always regret. The mental and physical effort it took, the time wasted on each diet, the anguish when they inevitably failed – and worse, the unfortunate regains of more weight than was lost – are all going to haunt me forever.

But I wish to let go of that resentment towards myself for falling into the dieting trap. In reality, I was told that was the only way I could become acceptable, healthy and attractive. I was told this by my friends, parents and family, doctors, boyfriends, and even strangers. And, I do not want my heart to stay heavy and burdened by the sadness I feel, when I remember this child and teenager hurting herself in the process of struggling to fit in. For the peace of my own heart, for the release of the hurt and resentment still stirring inside, I practice forgiveness meditation.

You can practice with me, if you wish, identifying your own place of hurt. You can direct forgiveness towards yourself or others, remembering that we hurt or harm ourselves and others out of our own pain, fear, or anger. Sometimes just having an intention to forgive is enough. This is one of my intentions for the New Year – to fully forgive the harm I caused myself as well as the hurt that was caused by others. Most of the harm was caused unknowingly, too. We could not have predicted the outcomes on my mental and physical health with the knowledge we had at a time.

May forgiveness bring the inner and outer peace to our lives and may the world become a more peaceful place as a result. I wish us all a calmer, safer and happier year!

Final note:

Today’s blog as well as the guided meditation were inspired by two wonderful meditation teachers and their meditations on forgiveness: Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. If you are new to mindfulness meditation, I can highly recommend following their work – it is all very accessible to beginners 😊