Punching Yourself Until They Give Up

Have you ever been taken advantage of? Injured? Disrespected? Of course you have! Everyone has. As we shall soon see, determining the responsibility for what happens to you can be a very tough assignment; but, figuring out who's responsible for what happens next is easy: you are! 'Forgive and forget,' says the old cliché. 'Easier said than done,' you fire back. On the subject of being wronged, have you ever heard yourself say, "I can forgive, but I'll never forget!" We have a wonderful name for past wrongs that stick in our memories: they're called resentments, and they cling to us more heavily than Jacob Marley's chains.

What is it that you want to do to those people in your life whose words and actions have caused you the most pain and hardship? Make them hurt as you did? Make them pay? Expose them to the contempt and ridicule of their peers? Let them see how it feels to have such things happen to them? Punish them? Yes, of course: punish them! So you file the memory safely away just in case the opportunity should arise.

Do you remember what Thoreau wrote in Walden about picking up a stone? When you carry the stone into your home for safekeeping, the relationship between the stone and you reverses itself. Suddenly, the stone owns you! You have to store it, take care of it, move it, and generally deal with it. So it is with all those carefully stored resentments. Once you put one safely in your memory, suddenly it owns you. Not only that, the memory itself is painful. Keeping it around hurts . . . you! Hanging on to a resentment is exactly like punching yourself over and over again and wondering why the other person doesn't just throw in the towel. You're standing there in the ring bleeding, while your opponent is unaware that there's a fight going on! Is this a healthy way to live? Not so much!

The midlife transition is all about transforming your life from the externally-motivated value system of the adult to the internally- (that means spiritually-) motivated life that characterizes the mature individual. One key factor in this transformation — a factor that is way too often neglected — is doing a moral housecleaning. This housecleaning goes way beyond taking stock of the times we acted unethically or from purely selfish motives: it also must include radical forgiveness. So long as you're carting around a big bag of (real or imagined) injuries and the resentments that derive from them, you're not free to re-create yourself according to the blueprints and patterns you find inside. Like the rock in Thoreau's cottage, something outside of yourself owns you. And, when I hear you crying out after reading this, "Les, I can't just forget all the terrible things that so-and-so did to me!" I reply, "Yes, you can . . . and it's not nearly as difficult as you imagine."

If you approach forgiveness with a system in mind (particularly if you're doing a major housecleaning), you'll find that it will be relatively simple and, at the same time, can produce some very powerful results. Here's a suggestion that might make this exercise the most worthwhile possible: follow my directions precisely (trust me: I've done this myself). Here's how you might do this (Follow each instruction without reading the next one):

1. Take a blank piece of paper (preferably legal size, if you can), and turn it so that it's in 'landscape' orientation (it's wider than it is tall). With a ruler, line the paper all the way across. (If you have access to accounting ledger paper, that'll work even better . . . you won't have to line it!)


2. Now, fold the right-hand third of the paper backwards so that it lies underneath the page when you have it face up on your desk or table.


3. Down the left side of the page, in a vertical column, list every individual, group or institution you can remember that has hurt or injured you. Take your time. Be thorough. You'll probably need several pages, so prepare each one exactly the same way you did your first page.


4. When you have completed that column, go back to the top of the first page. Next to each individual, group or institution, write down what it was they did to injure you. If there were a lot of things, you may have to write small.


5. Read this ONLY after having completed steps 1-4! Once you've completed the second column, go back to the top of the first page, and open the flap that you've tucked underneath. Now, starting from the top of your list, write down in as great detail as you have space for precisely what your contribution to the situation was. Take your time, think hard, be honest.

Now that you've completed your inventory, review it with an open heart and mind. It's so easy to carry resentments when you believe that you're the injured party. Keep in mind, that an 'innocent victim' is still a victim after all. Once we recognize our part in every situation for which we still carry a resentment, we may find that those resentments no longer make a whole lot of sense. Looking at our list, we may very well find ourselves saying, in each case, "Oh yeah, well, I forgot that I did that. Why don't I just drop that one?" And that's exactly the point: you can drop it . . . just as soon as you recognize and accept your part in it.

If you accomplish this well and thoroughly, congratulations! You'll be well on your way toward setting down once and for all that heavy baggage of resentments. You see, unlike the times you simply said, "I forgive them," or even "I forgive you," when you own your part in a situation, the tendency to want to go back and revisit the hurt once again tends to vanish. Once you've drained the emotional energy out of the event by accepting your responsibility, there's no reason for the memory to resurface, or, if something does bring it to mind, it will no longer stand out like a sore thumb: it'll just be one more memory along side millions and millions of others. You will have forgiven and forgotten!

There remains one more stage to accomplish before your housecleaning is complete: making amends wherever possible and sensible. Don't worry about this stage right now: if you've actually reached a state of forgiveness, you've accomplished a huge amount. When you're ready — and you feel the desire to address whatever damage your behavior has done to relationships in the past — making amends is the next step, but it should only be done with the advice of, and under the care of, a wise mentor or spiritual adviser, and never alone.

If you've been brave enough, and wise enough, to follow through with this process of forgiveness, there's some exceptional news for you: you never have to carry another resentment or go through this process again! Just see to it that, in every instance from here on out, you recognize and admit your part in every painful situation. Remember: with the possible exception of young children and 'collateral damage' in warfare, there are no 'innocent victims.' There are only responsible men and women who make choices — some good, some not so good — who learn from their mistakes when they have the courage to recognize them, admit them and move on.