AHSS The Gift of Years: Forgiveness (Lesson 34)

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “The young know the rules. The old know the exceptions.” We learn as the years go by that life is nothing but a series of exceptions to be reckoned with, to be mediated, to be understood. Our standards are only that – standards. They are not absolutes, and those who seek to make them so soon fall in the face of their own rigidities. We not only know that no one is perfect, we know that no one can be.

We know these things now with the kind of knowledge that can only come from knowing ourselves, from the awareness of our own failings, our own mistakes, our great desire to be perfect and, whatever our efforts at anything, our own cavernous need for mercy. The problem is that once we know something, we can never not know it. It requires a new kind of honesty from us. It burdens us with its truth.

Age is a veritable mineshaft of hard-won truths. Marriage is not a matter of always and only “living happily ever after,” we discover. Youth is not “carefree,” not matter how says so. Governments are not unfailingly worth our “allegiance,” and religions, too, “sin,” we learn. But maybe more compelling than any other is the awareness that having been failed against, we too have failed. We not only have much to forgive, we have much to be forgiven for – if not by others, at least by ourselves.

It is often not so much what we have done or what has been done to us, but what we have done because of it that is the greater grief. Family feuds go on for generations, for instance, far beyond the time when anybody remembers, if they ever knew, exactly how the rift started or why. Worse still are the friendships that collapse and the time that is lost between us because, unlike family, there are no natural meeting points to bring people back together again.

Only forgiveness can stem such pain in us. An apology alone can’t possibly do it. This kind of pain that has been fed by time, can be healed only by the wounded because it is the wounded who is maintaining it. The hardness is in our hearts now.  We own it, foster it, and are suffering from it more than the person we hold responsible for the hurt. The question is, why does such an old sore hurt more now that we are old than it did when it happened? Or, conversely, why are we more sensitive to it now than we have been for years? And the answer is “because.”

Because we are: older now, feeling time now, seeing youthful foolishness now, realizing the distance this has put between ourselves and people we loved has been much more damaging to our souls than the original offense could ever have been, and because it is time to value exception more than recrimination. Only forgiveness is the therapy of old age that wipes the slate clean, that heals as it embraces. Forgiveness is more important to the one who forgives than it is to the one forgiven.

Bitterness skews our balance for years to come. Only we can free ourselves from the burden of bitterness old anger brings with it still. Hasn’t too much time been wasted on this little bit of nothingness already? Is this the kind of thing we want to have continue to weigh us down as we spend the last of our days, the best of our days? Forgiveness puts life back together again. We are who we are – and so is everyone else. It is forgiveness of others that gains for us the right to forgive ourselves for being less than we always wanted to be.

Sister Joan says: A burden of these years is that we run the risk of allowing ourselves to be choked by the struggles of the past. A blessing of these years is the ability to see that life does not have to be perfect to be perfect; it only needs to be forgiving - and forgiven.

1. “Forgiveness is more important to the one who forgives than it is to the one who is forgiven.” Reflect on this and then discuss or journal your thoughts.
2. What are some festering grudges that need forgiveness to free yourself from the burden of holding on to them? Can you write a note to or call the offender? Can you forgive yourself? Journal or discuss your thoughts.