We have all felt like victims at one time or another. Humans are all trapped in the illusion of duality — the cycle of good and bad, happiness and sadness. All of us are consequently at the effect of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual world. Yet if we acknowledged responsibility for our life situations, we would never see ourselves as victims, and thus would never have reason to forgive others. True responsibility has nothing to do with blame, shame, or guilt, but it is the ultimate declaration that we are the creators of all our life circumstances. Although this is often hard to do, it is the key to true forgiveness.
Consider forgiveness as a remedy to relieve past trauma and free ourselves of victimization. We might squirm at the thought of forgiving, as Jesus puts it, “…not seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21–22). Realistically speaking, who can forgive repeated assaults on our being, no matter how harsh or slight? Can you imagine someone harming you repeatedly, and being expected to forgive that person again and again? We cannot be so sure that Jesus meant his words to this extreme. Jesus often spoke in parables — a symbolic language. What we can assert is that Jesus intends for us to transcend our being in a way that is uncommon.
What forgiveness usually means
To understand an uncommon suggestion, we must first look at what is naturally common in forgiveness. Webster’s dictionary defines forgive as “to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.” In serious situations, it may be hard to forgive, because the anger that heats up inside us is difficult to let go of. Certainly, an angry heart has no capacity to forgive. Perhaps the pain is too great, and the assault too horrible. If this is the case, then we could choose not to give a pardon. How can we forgive when there is no room in our heart to do so? When we live within the parameters of Webster’s definition, forgiveness is nothing more than a commodity that quickly becomes a chore.
The common view of forgiveness holds that we bestow it, as an honor, on someone who has deliberately hurt us. Defined this way, forgiveness casts the forgiver as the one with the right to grant a pardon. In Rabbi Rami Guide to Forgiveness, Rami Shapiro suggests that “forgiveness is not so much an act as an attitude.” He states that forgiveness happens when we realize that people are not out to get us, but out to take care of themselves. He also asserts that forgiveness is crucial to right living because it frees us from the past so that we can engage with the present, both good and bad.
The component that changes everything
Once we step beyond the common viewpoint of forgiveness, we can take into consideration the key component necessary to truly forgive — compassion. With compassion comes the virtuous humility necessary to realize that we are all doing the best we can for the moment. It allows us to take on a broader perspective, opening our heart to the possibility that the other person may also be hurting and trying to meet the challenges of their life while they struggle with their own limited vision.
Compassion, at its root, is a moment of clarity in which we recognize our shared humanity. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, describes it as “genuine sympathy for others’ suffering and the will to help remove their pain.” He goes further: “we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind.” When we understand that the person who wronged us is, like us, navigating a world they did not fully choose and do not fully understand, something in us begins to loosen, and the grip of resentment eases. The harm still happened. We refuse to let it become the whole story, either of who that person is or of who we are.
The compassion we withhold from ourselves
The compassion we owe ourselves is the kind we overlook most often. For many of us, the hardest forgiveness of all turns inward — for choices made under pain, for time spent in anger, for years spent carrying a wound alone. As we extend understanding to others caught in the spiral of human struggle, we extend that same grace to our own hearts. Epictetus, the Greek Stoic teacher who was born a slave in the first century, put it this way: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.” His teaching invites us to reclaim our inner life, without force and without blame. Self-compassion is strength, and one of the least visible forms of courage.
Compassion grows over time, the way a seed works beneath the surface long before a green shoot appears above the ground. We may feel no compassion on the first day, or even in the first year after a deep wound. Yet if we hold the intention — if we are willing to wonder, for a moment, what life looks like through the other person’s eyes — compassion takes root. This is what Rabbi Shapiro points toward when he calls forgiveness an attitude more than an act. An attitude grows day by day, in the small choices we make about where we place our attention and what we allow our heart to hold.
We all share the same spiral
We are all caught, equally, in the spiral of ups and downs — all at the effect of one another and the world. Jesus of Nazareth reminded us that God is all-inclusive, and he encouraged us to, again, step beyond the norm.
To step beyond the norm, as Jesus invited, is to step beyond keeping score altogether — beyond who owes whom, and who has earned a pardon. It is to stand in a wider field, where compassion dissolves the walls we have built around our wounds. Understood this way, forgiveness is something we reclaim for ourselves: a return to wholeness. And as each of us finds our own way back to that wholeness, we extend the possibility of it to those around us.