It takes so much courage to forgive the difficult people in our lives. Yet until we forgive, we can never put the past completely behind us and create a future free from the constraints of the past.
One reason I think it's so hard to forgive is because we confuse forgiveness with condoning what was done to us. They're not the same.
Two recent movies have reminded me of the courage it takes to forgive and the freedom that becomes available when we do. Both movies are based on true events.
"The Railway Man" is the story of Eric Lomax, a British engineer fighting in Singapore during World War II. His unit is captured by the Japanese and taken to Thailand where they are forced into slave labor to build the Thai-Burma railroad. Lomax is tortured. His forearms are smashed and he is repeatedly waterboarded.
Lomax survives, but he is haunted by what happened to him. He suffers what today we would call post traumatic stress disorder, repeatedly reliving the torture.
In 1980, Lomax discovers that Takashi Nagase, one of his torturers, is alive in Japan. Lomax tracks him down with the intent of killing him. Instead, he realizes that the war will never truly end for him until he forgives his tormentor. Lomax does so. The scene where he and Nagase embrace is unbelievably moving.
Here's a video of the real Lomax and the real Nagase:
In "Philomena," the teenage Philomena Lee becomes pregnant and is sent by her father to live in an Abbey where she is held in virtual servitude. The nuns force her to give up her son for adoption.
As an adult, Philomena searches for her son. She is joined by a newspaper man thinking this would make a great story.
Philomena discovers that her son, renamed Michael by the American family that adopted him, died of AIDS at the age of 43. Knowing he was dying, Michael visited the Abbey to search for his birth mother. The nuns knew where Philomena was, but refused to let her son know. They had also refused to let Philomena know that her son was looking for her. Michael died thinking Philomena was uninterested in finding him.
When the truth is uncovered, the newspaper man is outraged and shouts curses at the nuns. He expects Philomena to do the same. But in an extraordinary act of generosity and courage, Philomena forgives the nuns, saying that she doesn't want to live her life full of hate. She knows that, like Eric Lomax, her suffering will never end unless she forgives.
It takes so much courage to let go of the past hurts done to us. The movie examples are of people who were tortured and lied to. But our daily interactions with difficult people are much more mundane: The person who treats us like we don't exist at meetings or talks over us. The person who butts in front of us in line without apology. The person who tailgates us because we won't drive faster. The person who criticizes us without regard for our feelings. The person who calls us stupid or lazy or some name that hurts. The person who is arrogant or stubborn or opinionated or, in short, difficult to get along with. Sometimes we hold on to these daily slights for years.
I remember meeting a man who had spent years blaming his ex wife for their divorce. One day, having had no contact with her since the divorce, he called her. When she answered, he apologized for blaming her. He took responsibility for the divorce. Not 50% of the responsibility. 100%. He told his ex wife that he was genuinely sorry.
When he was done speaking, there was a long pause. Finally, his ex wife said to him (and this is a quote. It was such a surprising comment that I wrote it down), "I was prepared to hate you for the rest of my life. What am I going to do now?"
A great question. A hole is left when we give up resentment. What are we going to do now? I think the answer is that now we can be free and powerful. Now we can create a future free from the past that was holding us back. Now we are free to be extraordinary.
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