Forgiveness

In all my years working with people who have sometimes done terrible things, I have come to understand some things about forgiveness. The more you learn about the circumstances of what it was that happened, the more you see the humanity in it as well. What I mean is that we are capable of anything given what we are, what we are affected by, what we are aware of and what we are not aware of. Any action is the result of complex factors and the more you can account for all knowable factors, the more you see that there was probably a 100% chance that what did happen was going to happen. This does not mean that what happened was right or fair or justified. In a reality where there is endless possibility, anything can happen. Now we all have opinions or judgments about things that happen and we frequently pass judgment on others as well as ourselves. But in the area of forgiveness, we need to be able to take a "God's -eye view" of the situation, which is practically impossible given that we are finite beings with limited awareness. But we can use our imagination to see that if we could see and understand every single factor involved in an event, we could well understand not only why it happened, but also that it was going to be exactly the way it was. If critical factors had been different, the result would have been different. Here is an opportunity for seeing with eyes of love and compassion. When something happens that we regret, we begin a process of grief. We may move through that process or not. If we do not it is because we cannot come to accept what happened. That is very important because whatever regret we hold becomes a burden on us. But if we can see, that regrettable as the thing was, it was going to be no other way, and we can have empathy and compassion for our humanity or the same for another person, then we can move on to acceptance and even forgiveness. This will always require great capacity for being humane. But that is a power we can access.