Forgiveness

I have been thinking about forgiveness over the last few days. Or I should say, the concept of forgiveness seems to be finding its way to me when my mind is distracted doing something else. I would like to think I'm a forgiving person, live and let live, understand those that would wrong us... and on an intellectual level I am. But on a personal level I think I have a very long way to go. Some people I have forgiven for actions that could be perceived as 'wronging' me. Others I would like to forgive, but have found it much harder to let go of that internal argumentative dialogue that I would find myself in while waiting for the train in the morning.

The thing that got me thinking of forgiveness was a conversation. During the evening (yes, that evening) last week, my friend Amy was telling some workmates about another workmate that she is very good friends with. She was saying what a fantastic man he is, and how much she likes him (as a friend--she is very VERY happily married). The funny thing was, I was sitting there, knowing the history of their friendship like noone else at that table did, and if he had been my friend, and had treated me the way he had treated her, I would no longer speak to him. It's a long story, the essence being, he misrepresented his friendship with Amy, making out she had a huge crush on him, to impress his new girlfriend. The new girlfriend continued the ridicule when she and Amy finally met, and poor Amy was shocked, hurt and angry. She finally found out why she was being treated that way, and was furious. This would have been the point where I would have told him where he could shove his friendship. But she hadn't. She had forgiven him.

When I was sitting there, hearing her talking to these other people, at first I felt uncomfortable, as though I was being dragged into a lie. It dawned on me though, that it wasn't a lie if it wasn't a lie to her. The thing I love about her is this wonderful embracing approach she has to everything in life. She laughs loudly and often. She has a fantastic sense of the ridiculous. As I sat there, listening to her speak with absolute conviction about how she felt about her friend, I realised that what I initially thought was a weakness was, in fact, a great strength. I admired her so much in that moment.

As though in tune with where my thoughts had been over the last few days, I flicked on the TV last night. The story was, again, a story of forgiveness. Of such a magnitude I can only just begin to have a ghost of an understanding to fathom it. "Australian Story" is a weekly documentary series that looks at the stories of ordinary people who have had extraordinary experiences. Last night's story, From this day forth, was the story of Ann O'Neill, a seemingly ordinary woman with two young children, separated from her husband, until the night he broke into her home, shot their children in her bed, shot her in the leg and then calmly told her to call the police as he went into another room and killed himself.

I could imagine nothing more horrific to live through than what this woman had been through. The tragedy, compounded with the anger and guilt and accusations, would be enough, you would imagine, to leave the best person bitter in the truest sense. However, Ann O'Neill had found a way to forgive her husband. She isn't physically intact (her leg was amputated) or emotionally intact (she doubts she will ever trust enough again to remarry or have another family), but there was a sense of ... the word would could so easily sound twee... a sense of serenity about her that left me sitting in awe.

We live in a world that is so much about competitiveness, about winning, being better, not being beaten, not being taken advantage of, not being perceived as weak, as a loser. Yet these two women demonstrated to me far greater strength in their acceptance and forgiveness than any amount of physical revenge could have done. I'm determined now to try to find more forgiveness in my life too.