Can You Forgive Yourself?
by Kent
Nerburn
 Most of us
have some corner where we cannot forgive ourselves. Sometimes it is obvious: the
mother who leaves her child unattended for a moment and the child wanders into
the street and a terrible death; the son who refuses to speak to his parents for
years and realizes his errors only after they are gone.
But sometimes it is more subtle,
and well buttressed with explanations and rationalizations: The abortion was
necessary because we had neither the financial nor the emotional resources to
bring another child into the world. The divorce was the only way to free two
hearts from a destructive downward spiral. The harsh words we said to our
children were for their own good. The time we spent at our job rather than with
our family was necessary to provide them with the quality of life they
deserved.
Perhaps our decisions were right,
or necessary, or inevitable. Perhaps they were capricious and unwarranted. But
we made them, and they are now and forever part of our lives. Still, our hearts
ache for the choices made or denied, and we bury that ache beneath a blanket of
guilt or high-minded justifications.
We need to find the hidden corners
of our lives where we have not forgiven ourselves -- for who we are, for who we
are not. And it is not always easy. Sometimes we have to dig through tragic
emotional wreckage. Sometimes we have to rip open scars we think have long been
healed. Sometimes we have to tear down beautifully crafted psychological
edifices. But to live with a pure heart and open spirit, we must have the
courage to face these challenges.
Human beings are strange and
miraculous creations. From our first moment on earth we are hurtling toward
uniqueness and individuation. We revel in that uniqueness and find our identity
in that individuation. But this sense of our own uniqueness and singularity
comes at a price. For, with every door of understanding that is opened by the
circumstances or choices of our lives, a wealth of others are closed. The child
surrounded by joy does not learn the same world as the child surrounded with
sadness. The child filled with fear does not discover the same world as the
child filled with curiosity. I didn't know the same world as a child whose
father went out every day to officiate at weddings, or the same world as the
child with no father present at all. Every nuance of character and circumstance
shuts out possibility even as it reveals the world in growing clarity and
fullness. We become who we are at the expense of who we are not.
Emotionally healthy people accept
this individuation with a sense of humility. They know that we are children of
chance, and that we must develop our lives and give thanks for the miracle of
life as it has been handed to us. They celebrate their uniqueness -- with all
its possibilities and limitations -- build upon it, and use it as a way to
contribute to the rich tapestry of humanity.
Emotionally unhealthy people, on
the other hand, do not so readily give thanks for the shape life takes. They
turn against themselves, refusing to embrace who they are, and go through life
with the sense that their world is not enough. They are not rich enough, they
are not smart enough, they are not pretty enough; they haven't gotten the right
chances, the breaks have all gone someone else's way. Quick to see any
deficiency in their own situation, they are slow to celebrate the gifts life has
given them. The miracle of their uniqueness becomes instead the prison of their
limitations. They define themselves by what they are not.
Most of us, however, lie somewhere
in between. We're reasonably happy with our lives, but look with longing at the
road not taken. We retain a lifelong ambivalence about who we are, and never
fully grasp the potential that our unique life experiences offer us. We see the
smallness of our lives, not the greatness of our gifts, and feel deficient in
relation to those we hold as models of success and
accomplishment.
We must learn to resist this.
Until we can embrace our lives wholeheartedly, aware of our limitations and
committed to making the most of our unique circumstances and gifts, we have not
fully accepted ourselves for the people we are, or fully forgiven ourselves for
the people we are not.
I will never be Nelson Mandela, or
Gandhi, or even the gentle, soft-spoken man down the street. I will never be as
hardworking as my father. I will never be a mountain climber or a buddha or
someone who bikes across the United States. I will never be a
saint.
But I will always be a good
listener, a faithful friend, a person whose word can be trusted. I will always
stand by the weak and protect the innocent. But I will also be a person filled
with righteous indignation at the injustices in the universe, a person prone to
deep solitudes and possessed of a dark cast of spirit and perhaps overly aware
that tragedy can strike in the middle of the night.
In short, I will be a person like
everybody else -- a unique and fallible human being, possessed of conflicting
and sometimes contradictory characteristics, whose life is full of moments of
brightness and moments of dark impenetrable shadow; a person at once more than I
had hoped but less than I had dreamed.
I must learn to accept this person
and to embrace him. I must learn to look at the unique constellation of skills
and attributes I have, the strange character twists and quirks I've developed,
the quality of my own passions and the subtlety of my own deceptions. I must
learn to acknowledge my fears, respect my own dreams, and measure them only
against the simple standard of how they help make this a better world for the
people around me and the generations that come after me.
If I am able to do this, I will
not try to be what I am not, but I will try to make the most of what I am. And,
in doing this, I will forgive myself for all the possibilities that didn't take
flower in me, and will honor them whenever I see them present in
others.
This is the first and most
necessary step upon the path of forgiveness. If I am not accepting of myself,
all that is good in others will either be a mirror of my own deficiencies, or a
cause of envy, or a way of life against which I must protect myself with
cynicism or contempt.
Life cannot be lived this way. It
is too short, too precious, too important. There are children out there who need
my help; there is a family that relies on me for love. There are people I meet
on the street and in chance encounters whose lives can be either better or worse
for the moment's contact we share.
I must measure myself in these
moments, not in some abstract valuation of my own spiritual accomplishments or
against the accomplishments of others. I am who I am, and I must honor the
vision of life I have been given. If that vision shuts out other people, I must
work to change it. If it allows me to give and to open myself to others, I must
foster it.
We are, to the best of our
knowledge, given only one go-round on this earth. We are thrown together with a
group of strangers who share our passage through time, and, together, we leave
as a generation and become, both literally and figuratively, the soil on which
future generations walk.
It is our responsibility, both
singly and together, to prepare this earth for those who follow. The moments we
confront in our lives will never be confronted by anyone else. The encounters we
have are unique in this universe. All that we can do is meet the moments we have
been granted with a humble and caring heart, and share the gifts we have been
given with those whose lives brush against ours.
In this way -- in this active
claiming of our own fallible self, and shaping it for a life of service -- we
open our hearts to the possibility of forgiveness. Rather than railing against
our deficiencies, or constructing justifications for them, we see them as part
of our unique life and circumstances, and look for the moment when the unique
person we are is needed, and offer ourselves in service, humbly, and like a
prayer.
It is no crime to be less than our
dreams, or to stumble and fall on life's path. The crime is in refusing to get
up and move toward the light, or in being unwilling to embrace those around us
who have fallen in their own way.
We will never be as good or worthy
as we wish to be. We will be human -- too human -- and we will fall short of our
hopes for ourselves over and over again. If we can forgive ourselves for our
failures -- not seven times, but seventy times seven -- we can forgive others
for their failures. We know that we are all humans, struggling by the lights we
have toward our vision of good.
As I sit here now, I think of the
life that might have been, and the man I longed to be. I see the hollow reed of
pure spiritual consciousness, the instrument of God's peace, that I dreamed of
being when I was a child. And I know that it was good.
But then I think of my family,
with each of us struggling to find form, struggling to dream, struggling to make
sense of the world around us, but always finding in our common love a solid rock
on which to build our lives, and it, too, is good. That I have been given such a
gift is humbling beyond words. A life of solitary spiritual rigor would have
been different, but it would have been no more worthy.
I could not have dreamed this
life, could not have invented it from the whole cloth of my imagination. It is a
miracle in its uniqueness, a treasure of unexpected grace. Though I am not what
I thought I should be, I am more than I might ever have hoped. As 1 survey the
landscape of my life, I am overcome with a sense of wonder.
Somewhere, another man, much like
me, may be living a life of pure spiritual consciousness, unencumbered with
fragmentary personal emotions, able to enter the lives and hearts of those he
meets because his own heart is empty of concern with self. But I am not that
man. I walk the streets, full of loves and fears and angers and dreams, tethered
to family and worldly cares. Yet I know, in my heart, that whenever there is a
call in the night, I will rise from my sleep and offer such nourishment and
consolation as I am able. It is the least I can do as thanks for the miraculous
gift of life that has been given to me.
 This article was
excerpted from the book:
Calm Surrender, Walking the Hard Road of Forgiveness
by Kent Nerburn.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World
Library, Novato, CA 94949. ©
2000. www.newworldlibrary.com.
For more info or to purchase this
book.
About The
Author
Kent Nerburn is an author, sculptor, and educator
who has been deeply involved in Native American issues and education. He holds a
Ph.D. in both Theology and Art. He has edited three highly acclaimed books on
Native American subjects: Native American Wisdom, The Wisdom of the Great Chiefs, and The Soul of An Indian. Kent Nerburn is also the author
of Letters To My Son, a book of essays written as a gift
to his son; Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian
Elder which won the Minnesota Book Award for 1995; Simple Truths: Clear and Gentle Guidance on the Big Issues of
Life; A Haunting Reverence: Meditations On a Northern
Land, Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life and Native American Wisdom. Visit his website at www.kentnerburn.com.
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