A Lesson on Forgiveness.

Happy New Year! I have started and stalled on many blog posts since 2018 has started, but this is one I feel compelled to share, even though it has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with life in the world we live in.

Today my children, three and six, were playing with blocks. They started to bicker, as siblings do. My son in a show of power knocked over his little sister’s tower. When scolded, he defiantly refused to apologize, so my daughter knocked over his tower.

It was only fair.

But now there were two angry and hurt children, with tears in their eyes.

It was only fair that since he knocked down her tower, she knocked down his.

And yet neither of them felt satisfied with the solution. Neither my son, who had been the initial aggressor, nor my daughter who had offered fair retaliation for the destruction of her creation felt any better now that their towers both lay in ruins.

I asked my children to forgive each other. To hug and make up and my son agreed but my daughter held out. I asked her why.

“Because my feelings are hurt. I’m very mad at him.”

“Even though you did the same thing to him?”

“Yes.”

I asked my son how he felt about it.

“My feeling are hurt. I really liked my tower and she didn’t have to destroy it.”

“Even though you started it?”

“Yes.”

“Would it make you feel better if you guys were friends again?”

They glanced at each other and back at me, their eyes wet as they both nodded.

Then, my daughter ran to her brother and wrapped her little arms around him and said “I love you.”

He hugged her back. “I love you too.”

The tears were gone. The hurt faded away and they both went on to build new towers  while I sat thinking about what had just transpired.

Even with a completely fair and equitable solution of mutual destruction, neither child felt good. Hurting her brother didn’t make my daughter feel any better about what he had done, although it was her first inclination to retaliate against him. When all the block lay on the floor, their creations in ruin, they were both even more upset then they had been in the first place.

My daughter didn’t need her brother’s forgiveness to feel better. She only needed to forgive him. The same with my son.

We don’t forgive to absolve those who hurt us. We forgive to allow ourselves to put down the burden of anger. It may not be our first inclination, but we are thinking, reasoning beings capable of more than instinctual reaction.

Anger, resentment, hurt feelings consume us, and block us from our greater aspects. When we let those things go, we are again free to build, create and move forward with our pursuits of happiness.