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 to forgive

the doctor's thoughts ..........


When I wrote this poem Peter was foremost in my mind. He was a young man who claimed had been unfairly dismissed from the army after an injury ten years before. He had been suing the army ever since. He was obsessed with it. It had cost him all his savings. His marriage had broken up and his wife had moved away with their children.

I have seen so many patients like Peter become ill because they were carrying such anger and were unable to let it go. They wanted recognition and revenge at any cost. They do not realise that their anger is the cause of their illness, the cost is their health and the only real cure is forgiveness, freeing themselves so they could start to heal and grow again.

It is fine to seek justice and a fair settlement or compensation, to expect a fair punishment for any offender, but to hold on to the anger is only detrimental to themselves. They are the loser, not the person against whom the anger is directed.

“Not forgiving someone is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.” – Author unknown

But to a point we all do it.  We all hold judgement, blame and anger at things that have happened to us in the past.  I believe that these buried feelings will commonly manifest themselves as illness or accident.

I have learnt that  forgiveness is the only effective remedy.  I have learnt that the first person we must forgive is ourself.   We need to  wash the slate clean of all our past mistakes, blunders, issues, problems and concerns.   We need to forgive ourself for all of the things we have done and left undone, all of the mistakes, even those which had large consequences and which have deeply affected our life today.  We need to  forgive ourself by gently releasing  all the blame that we put upon ourself and begin again. 

I have learnt that the day to do it is today,  the day to pick ourself up , dust off our past and start all over again.

                “Every day is a new life to a wise man.”   Anon

When we have learnt to forgive ourselves then we can start to forgive others who have affected our lives, who have hurt us, betrayed us, abandoned us.  We can start to understand that  their mistakes are in the past, that commonly they were doing the best that they could,  that they made mistakes as we did. We can now appreciate that from this moment we can choose how they will continue to affect us.

Forgiveness is not forgetting the past but accepting that that is “what was” and cannot be changed.  We can now create “what is” by setting new boundaries.  We can let it all go realising that we are on a new path directed only by ourselves and that the past experience was a wonderful lesson.  We may continue to seek justice for past criminal or negligent acts but we need not be controlled or consumed by the process.  We can now live our days without the anger festering and poisoning our minds and bodies.