What if forgiveness was more about when than what?
I thought of a friend recently. Let’s call him George.
My first thought was: I haven’t seen George in a long time.
My second? That guy needs to forgive himself.
George is a good guy. He's successful. He’s also very hard on himself. Every now and then, I sense a quiet undercurrent of self-loathing. My sense is he'd be a lot lighter if he forgave himself (for whatever it is he's holding onto).
A lot of us are George.
I heard someone recently say that forgiving another person is more a question of when than what.
If a friend betrays you and you haven’t forgiven them yet, whenever you think of them, you feel outrage and shock over the betrayal. You’re still living as if the betrayal is happening right now, even if it was years ago.
Forgiveness, then, is choosing to live as if the betrayal is truly in the past. You may not trust them again. But you take your lesson and move on. You stop living as if the past were the present.
Which made me wonder: What would it look like to forgive yourself?
Maybe it’s the same move. You take the lesson and move on.
That led to another question: are people with higher self-agency—people who believe they can act, adapt, and change—more able to forgive themselves because they're more likely to feel they can move on?
I’m curious.
If you’re willing, hit reply and answer three quick questions (I won’t share your response):
How kind are you to yourself?
How well do you forgive yourself?
How much agency do you feel you have right now?