In Retrospect....

‘It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.’
– SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago now, I was deeply hurt by the way someone used me. Deeply hurt to the extent that I avoided her whenever and however possible for years.

Angry words came out of nowhere at me, taking me absolutely by surprise and rendering me all but speechless. I managed a faltering “I’m sorry you feel that way” but nothing more.

We haven’t spoken for almost 20 years. While I didn’t cause the rift, my reaction didn’t help.

In retrospect I handled the above situations wrongly in every case. While the initial overt provocation wasn’t mine, my reaction to each was. What should I have done differently? Should I do anything about them today?

We all have those dark times in the middle of the night, when past mistakes rise up to haunt us: what we should have done, what we should have said, what we should have left unsaid. And we are consumed with guilt and regret. Perhaps we have lost touch with that person, or they have died. Perhaps they have moved away. Perhaps they just refuse to have anything to do with us. So we worry and fret which changes nothing and benefits no one.

Looking back to the first scenario above, when it became impossible to avoid that person in social settings, I decided not to snub her [my first reaction] but rather to act as if she had never hurt me. This was difficult at first but gradually became easier until I found myself one day having coffee with her. No, we never became bosom friends, but then we were never bosom friends in the first place. Would it have served any purpose to drag it all out and rehash it again? I thought not at the time and I still think not. Whether she ever knew how much she had hurt, and if so, whether she was sorry for it, really didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had pardoned [forgiven] her for what I had felt as a result of her actions. And that was reflected in the way I was able to interact with her. Not only that, but that lump of guilt and regret inside me, no longer appeared in the middle of the night.

As for the rest of the scenarios, I hope that I have learned from them and will now react to others in such a way that those incidents won’t be repeated again. That by showing more understanding and compassion to others, i am forgiving [pardoning] myself for those past offences where they were lacking. For as St.Francis says above ‘It is in pardoning that we are pardoned’ - and the hardest person to pardon is ourselves.

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