It’s all about joy!

I was re-reading some notes I took a few months ago after a particularly eye-opening conversation I had with a friend of mine. We were talking about the issues that all of us have with certain people in our lives, and how invested we get in those issues; how we define ourselves by them.

For me, one of my major investments has been in the fact that when I was ten years old, my father abandoned me. Subconsciously, the weight I’ve carried around with me in this regard has been HUGE. It’s bogged down all of my subsequent relationships and been a heavy burden that, until recently, I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I taught myself (or had been taught) to cast it aside like, “Yeah, it happened, but it’s for the best.” I never took the time to size up the damage; I never stopped to analyze what I really thought about the situation. Instead, I just took it for what it was, slung it over my shoulder like a knapsack, and kept walking.

Here’s the thing, if I came face-to-face with my father now, I’m not sure how I’d feel about him. If he’s the same person now that he was back then, would it affect my ability to forgive him? Could I have compassion for or even love him? Would it be easier to forgive and love him if I knew he’d changed in a way that appeased my desire for him to change?

As I learn more about unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness, I have to ask myself these things. Heck, I could ask these questions of anyone in my past who I feel “wronged” me (the cheating boyfriend, the betraying friend, etc.).

In the same conversation I referenced earlier, my friend said something that gave me pause. He said that maybe the best way we can love someone who hurts us is to never expect them to change; to never want them to. Maybe that’s how we free ourselves.

Freedom… What would that feel like?

I’ve been invested for so long in wanting my father to want me; for him to want to be a part of my life. What if I came face-to-face with him and was able to put down that heavy knapsack and actually see him for the man he is? Imagine if I could love him.

I may never know the answers to these questions because there’s a good chance I’ll never see him again. Any love or forgiveness I foster will likely be done from a distance.

However, what about the others? What about the people I still see on a regular basis - the ones who sometimes grind my nerves, push my buttons, or remind me of painful times? With them, I can’t use physical space as my coat of armor. They’re right there in front of me, forcing me to examine the many ways I continue to remain invested in my issues with them.

Truth be told, those are the people who stretch my capacity for love without even knowing it. They’re the ones who ask me to abandon the age-old thinking, “If they would just change, I could love them better.” And this condition that I place on loving them is not always even a conscious thought! But it’s there, invisible and powerful, forming the space from which I unwittingly operate.

What if I could just let these people be? What if we could all just let each other be?

True love and compassion rest in our ability to love people where they are right now. Casting aside our conditions, our expectations…the many definitions we’ve written for ourselves. We free ourselves and allow ourselves joy when we love people for who they are right now. Absent of that, we may never get the chance to.

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Related posts:
Learning How to Forgive & Have Compassion
Joy in Learning to Extend Metta to Strangers

Yesterday I wrote about an incident with a former friend of mine that left me feeling badly abused and incredibly hurt. In light of such experiences in life, how can we learn to forgive and have unconditional love for those who so clearly haven’t had it for us? Immediately following the incident with my former friend, I felt absolutely betrayed. While I did my best to steer away from thoughts like, “How dare she!” a few angry retaliation conversations did play out in my mind. I’ll be honest, immediately after it happened, I wondered how I could forgive her in my heart and ever have compassion for her again. She chose to treat me with contempt and disrespect. How could I bring myself to a place where thinking about her and the incident didn’t overwhelm me with bitterness?

In the little bit of Buddhism I’ve studied, the fact that all humans suffer is an underlying thread that connects us all. Every single person we’ve ever come across in this life is suffering in some way. Some people wear their suffering like a badge of honor, while others do their best to keep it neatly tucked in a back pocket. When we understand that all of us suffer, and moreover, that all of us want our suffering to end, it’s easier to have compassion for one another. After all, we’re all in the same boat.

As is the case with so many concepts, putting it into practice can be a challenge. For most of us, it’s easy to have compassion for the people we like. Likewise, it’s also pretty easy to have compassion for the people we dislike, but don’t have a strong connection with. However, having compassion for the people we’ve been close to who have betrayed our trust somehow…well, that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Since I’m knee-deep in this, I figured I’d share some pointers that may be helpful to anyone else who’s trying to learn to forgive and have compassion:

1. Take your time. It may not be reasonable to expect to forgive immediately following someone’s harmful actions toward us. Sometimes it takes a few days or weeks, or in extreme circumstances, years before we’re ready to forgive. That’s ok; like everything in life, forgiveness is a process. We honor it by letting it unfold naturally when we’re ready.
2. Forgiveness does not excuse the bad behavior. Some people think that forgiveness is a sign of weakness or that it’s letting someone who harmed us off the hook. Quite the contrary. When we forgive, we don’t deny, justify, or minimize what others have done to us or the pain we’ve suffered. We simply see it for what it is, and recognize that until we forgive, we are wasting our energy dwelling in a negative space.
3. Forgiveness starts the healing process. When we choose to forgive, we look at the wounds we suffered and make a conscious decision to move forward and begin healing. Forgiveness let’s us claim the right to stop hurting. We claim this right when we say, “I’m tired of the pain, and I want to be healed.”
4. Those who cause us harm are badly harmed themselves. This is another way of saying we all suffer. People who lash out in anger toward others are fighting their own internal battle. Many times they are in great pain and to distract themselves from it, they try to cast it onto others. Remembering this can help us have compassion for them.
5. Everyone is a spiritual teacher, especially those who hurt us. Everyone we come across in this life has a lesson to teach us about ourselves. As a matter of fact, it’s been said that we draw people into our lives specifically to teach us about us. Think about the things you’ve learned about yourself from some of your closest confidants. Now think about the things you’ve learned about yourself from the people who caused you the most sorrow, difficulty, or posed the greatest challenge to you. Those are the people who stretched you beyond yourself and forced you to see parts of the whole you may not have known were there. Our adversaries are our greatest teachers, bar none.
6. Practice patience, one of the great virtues. When people cross us, it’s easy to snap to anger or treat them the same way they treated us. (”That’ll show ‘em!”) However, “…since it is impossible to make progress on the spiritual path without developing the strong mind of patience” it’s wiser to take a step back. “Patience is a mind motivated by a virtuous intention that happily accepts difficulties and harm from others.” In other words, those with patient minds more easily weather the turbulence of life’s little dramas. Those with an impatient mind suffer at the hand of every slight obstacle or criticism. A patient mind is an expanded mind, with plenty of space for the love and wisdom that naturally fill it.
7. What goes around comes around. Rather than applying this in the sense of “They’ll get theirs,” choose to see that when we forgive those who hurt us and practice compassion toward them, we’ll get the same energies back. Likewise, refusing to forgive others brings that same fate back on us eventually. If you’re anything like me and like to be in control, using “what goes around, comes around” as a means of ensuring a loving, more positive future should sound quite appealing!

The bottom line is that throughout our lives, we will encounter situations that warrant forgiveness. Whether it’s forgiving someone else, or forgiving ourselves, developing compassion and learning to forgive are two of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. (And heck, we’re in the midst of the season of giving!)

For me, there’s great joy in that.