Moving On or Letting Go

Published March 25, 2008

By Alex Townsend

Forgiveness is a strange thing. It’s one of those nasty aspects of life that’s riddled with grey areas. Sure, as young children we’re generally taught to be forgiving, but then again we also have numerous action movies showing us the super cool angst-ridden heroes we can be if we never forgive. Obviously, neither of these messages can be absolute. Otherwise it would be the easiest thing in the world to know whether or not someone should be forgiven. Sadly, people keep hurting each other and it tends to be in the meddlesome middle ground that lies between taking your toy train without asking and murdering your parents.

What are the rules then? At what point does someone lose the option of a second chance and what is gained by nursing the grudge they caused? There are scores of books that have been written about coming to terms with pain of various levels, so let’s look at this a bit more abstractly.

Matters of forgiveness are all about pain. Someone hurts you in some way, perhaps by manipulating your emotions, dumping you for another, or even by just canceling a trip last minute. It hurts. It can feel like a betrayal. Maybe it’s even so bad that you can barely make yourself leave your room. Maybe you stew in the pain for a year, a few days, or barely five minutes. That part isn’t as important though, as what comes after, once the stewing is done.

That’s the point where, one way or another, you have to find a way to move on. That’s when you generally have two options: to find it in your heart to be forgiving, or to leave the offender behind forever. As everyone likely knows, neither choice is an easy one.

To abandon someone you may have once cared for, possibly even had wonderful memories with, can feel like shutting a door in your life forever, and forever is a very frightening thing. It takes a lot of willpower and forceful spite to keep that door from opening again. It can leave you with scars for the rest of your life and an everlasting fear that someone else will hurt you the same way again.

On the other hand, there is forgiveness, an option that comes in prettier packaging but is not necessarily the better choice. Of course, it is often wonderful to forgive and forget. No one is perfect and mistakes will be made in any type of personal relationship, as many sitcoms are eager to tell us. However, there are times when it is better to be cynical and walk away, times when forgiving will only lead to dealing with the same events and feelings again.

Even forgetting that though, forgiveness itself hurts. It’s a wrenching sensation of taking your own feelings of sadness, anger, betrayal and telling yourself that they don’t matter. Those emotions can take a hike because you’re going to forget the whole incident that caused them. That’s hard, even if you’ve received a truly heart-felt apology. How can you let go when it still hurts? Won’t going back to your friend, family member, or significant other make you feel almost hollow inside? At least when you have a grudge to nurse you’re still allowed to feel something.

But forgiveness does happen quite frequently. And why not? It is often motivated by hope for better experiences to be gained afterwards. Even if there isn’t this outcome, few like the feeling of those perpetually shut doorways.

I think that forgiving is never really a matter of letting things go. It’s work. It’s striving to overcome your own grudges and working past your pain. It’s seeing the good in that other person which makes them worth forgiving. It’s an effort that’s not always possible and people certainly don’t always deserve it, but it’s one we need to give. The world has enough angst-ridden action heroes.

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