On Forgiveness

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One moment of true forgiveness can erase years of guilt, pain, or fear.  – Alan Cohen

On Forgiveness

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Mark Twain

You hear a lot about forgiveness these days. Forgive, and not necessarily forget, but rather forgive and Let Go. Lesson Number 122 in A Course in Miracles tells us that “Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want.” That’s a mighty big claim. Really? Everything?

I know that the person holding a grudge bears the burden, not the object of his or her bitterness. I know that if we forgive others, then we will be able to forgive ourselves.

But some people are easier to forgive than others.

Not that I’m an expert, but I have at least passed Forgiveness 101. I’ve barreled through forgiving my parents, (they did their best) my siblings, (ditto) the government, (they can’t please everyone) nature, (there must be reasons) God, (she’s smarter than me) all my Ex’s, (it takes two to tango) and myself (we all succumb to ego and insecurities). But there is one person I can’t forgive completely yet, and that is my last boss. Maybe someday, I will. Maybe never.

It is hard for me to admit that I don’t want to forgive her. Not wanting to forgive makes me mean and judgmental, makes me decidedly spiritually un-PC, but it’s not so much that I don’t want to forgive, but rather that I’ve been hurt, and forgiving her would mean I was letting her off the hook, or saying that what she did was okay.

On my 25th year of successful teaching, The Universe catapulted this woman from faraway lands and dropped her off in the tiny California town I have called home most of my life. At the same time, The Universe led me to the back by my best friend’s farm, near the fields I have frolicked through since I was a little girl, to discover a seemingly idyllic, little blue private school nestled in the back of town. It was at this very spot that the paths of my boss and I were destined to cross. This is the intersection is where The Universe decided to give me my graduate work on Forgiveness.

I had made the hard decision to leave my guaranteed tenure and pension in the public school system and the Test Taking Factory it had become after Bush decided to Leave No Child Behind, to ostensibly finish out my career in this outwardly tranquil little school, a short bike ride from the house I have lived in all of my adult life.

I had three bosses in three years. Boss One, saying how he liked my art projects and the Beatle music I played, told me to keep doing what I was doing. Boss Two, old and Wise, laid back and mellow, mostly talked to me about the Body Pump weight lifting classes we both attended before school. The third year, enter Boss Three, who fired me.

Right off, her name made me mad. She introduced herself to the staff with all eleven syllables of her impossible to pronounce name, including the somewhat pretentious title she tacked onto the beginning, and the hyphenated one syllable of her husband’s last name on the end. We all sat in silence trying to digest this name until someone reasonably asked her what she wanted to be called. She simply repeated this tongue- twister of name in her clipped British accent.

The lack of a pronounceable nickname gave me the message that she was going to keep her authoritative distance, and when she set up her new office way down the hall from us, far from the front office near the entrance of the school where my other two bosses sat, my hunch was confirmed. She was inaccessible.

She might have known this about herself. That’s maybe why she tried to counter the problem by telling us over email, to ‘pop into her office anytime for some hot tea.’ The problem was, if you had the time to make the long trek down the hallway to the other end of the school and peek into her office, she was never there.

I know one way to meander over to that place of Forgiveness is to find ways that you are like your perpetrator. Find common ground. They lied to you… have you ever lied? They cheated on you… have you ever cheated? Ok, her name made me mad.  My name makes me mad!  I have ten hard-to-pronounce syllables on my birth certificate name. But I changed it! I shortened it! I Americanized it! I didn’t tack on titles or my ex-husband’s name! I don’t make people try to memorize it!

But you know, and so do I, that focusing on this name business is all superficial fluff and distraction for what the real problem is. This boss was unapproachable, remote, and her soul difficult to get to. And in many ways, though this is hard for me to admit, so am I, and so is mine. Perhaps the Universe brought together two women with two opposite personalities,  each of which was carefully developed to keep up the wall they had built around their hearts, and to keep that wall strong and fortified.

Maybe here, at the meeting of these two barricaded hearts, is where the Universe saw an opportunity for learning.