Forgiving Oneself

 The word “forgiving” is more nuanced than I have been taught. The only time I think I have been taught about forgiveness is around my preschool days, in which, being the belligerent creatures that we were, hurt each other in several ways. But we also forgot about such instances quicker. Forgiving someone else meant essentially to rid oneself of a grudge held against another individual, and to remove an impediment to interaction that would otherwise bar such interaction without the grant of forgiveness.

There are several important questions surrounding forgiveness: Is it always right to forgive someone? Is it always right to forgive oneself? What does it mean to forgive oneself? How can one reduce the likelihood of engaging in actions that lead oneself to have to ask forgiveness? And in what circumstances is it appropriate to ask for forgiveness, and what does this imply about a person’s attitude toward the action for which they are seeking forgiveness?

One point that I think is unequivocally true is that a scenario in which one has to ask forgiveness is best avoided. The unpredictability and degree of disorder in the world is high enough that handling our lives is tough enough. Actions that pose additional burdens upon us, the burdens of seeking forgiveness, are ignoble and unglorious self-inflicted wounds.

Of course, the act of making decisions is inevitable, and to punish oneself with the expectation of not making a mistake is unreasonable. But it is another thing to compel or even allow oneself to make mistakes without putting up an honest fight, because such carelessness and unwillingness to discipline onself is indicative of a weakness of heart and a character that is unarmed to be able to fight to achieve one’s goals.

Once a mistake has been committed, however, it is no easy task to forgive oneself either. And of course, the assumption is that we are being true to ourselves throughout the process of forgiveness, in such a way that we can stay true to our inner feelings, which often possess a deeper, inexplicable quality about them (I suppose there is a reason why the cricket in Pinnoccio is not within the puppet himself, but rather a separate person. Both of these characters can hold grudges against each other, and fight with each other. But the cricket is wiser and older, and plainly and unremittingly expresses what Pinnoccio knows to be true deep down--that he is plagued by vices of greed, disloyalty, and lack of self-discipline.)

My guess, one that seems to be backed up by others’ ideas, such as Dr. Peterson, is that we simultaneously experience both the pull of vice, and the glorious, wise conscience within us. The noble path and ideal path, the path supposedly taken by God is entirely dedicated to following of consciousness. Never does God once consider taking the path temptation; he is driven to stay on the path of virtue and purity.

But humans are flawed, as I understand them. We have a natural proclivity to succumb to temptation, and stray from the path of virtue, even if we know it to be wrong deep down. Procrastination is a simple example: the act of procrastinating one is guilt-ridden precisely because it is the ignoble route; procrastinating is not the ideal route, the one we strive after, and in the image of which we hope to better shape ourselves. Watching YouTube instead of studying for a test, or even doing something less shameful, such as working on a lower-priority task because the more important one scares one so much that they are fearful to even acknowledge its existence, and reason out that they ought to work on it.

A large impending project is one such example I have faced in my life, and exactly fits in with this description of procrastination. In 11th grade, I had a literature project due; in this assignment, we were to write four analyses of various excerpts of literature from various sources. Now, you must understand that I had developed an aversion to such literature assignments, likely out of fear and disdain for the harsh criticism I would receive for my work, and the utter cluelesness I would often feel when beginning such assignments. Nonetheless, I had begun this assignment early on--I had finished one out of the four analyses, but relegated the last 3 to the last day of the project timeline. Thus, the overall quality of the assignment was reduced from what it should have been, had I been more attentive to the deadline, and confronted my fear of it. Now, my decision to put off working on the assignment is what I would call a mistake. It was a mistake that I made consciously, though I avoided telling myself that, to mitigate , though such relief was so painfully short-term, and by no means a solution to the assignment, let alone a temporary solution. My experience working on the assignment taught me this--that forgetting about such a responsibility, such as by diverting one’s attention to other tasks and pleasures does not make the assignment go away; it only makes the inevitable pain more poignant.

In the case of this assignment, I realized after the completion of the assignment that I had made a mistake. The wrong way to go about fixing this mistake is not to deprecate oneself, in my opinion, as such deprecation and attribution of such a mistake to one’s inherent deficiencies is an act that diminishes one’s ability to take charge and improve from that mistake. If I tell myself that I did not work on the assignment earlier because I’m a dumb rat, or that I do not have the self-discipline, then the next time I am faced with such a situation, I would not be compelled to face the less harsh pain early on while it is still less scathing; rather, I would feel powerless and unmotivated to make the improvement so crucial to bettering oneself. For this reason, forgiving oneself is not only a kind thing to do, but the necessary and proper course of action, without which fixing the problem would be less likely.

The motivation behind forgiveness of oneself is not to escape the downpour of suffering and misery that follows a bad mistake, either. Such misery is inevitable. To forgive oneself is not to forget about the problem, and focus on diversions of one’s mood. To forgive onself is to handle oneself as a compassionate mother would care for a foolish, naive child. She understands the mistake her child has made; yet she knows that to leave such behavior uncorrected would be to do a child a disservice, to make a decision that leaves her child temporarily satisfied, but with a fundamentally inaccurate belief that making such mistakes do not result in the suffering and consequences that they do. Dr. Peterson describes the role of a parent as a “proxy” for the real world--in a similar fashion, the attitude we must take towards the bettering of ourselves is to realize the distinct characters within ourselves, including the childish, untrained, and impulsive one within us, whose actions do us more of a disservice than benefit. Rather than ignoring or forgetting about the problem, reason and logic must be applied, all while ensuring, and this is important, that even the child within us follows our understanding and agrees with us. Because while the monkey is at the wheel (as explained in a viral Ted Talk on procrastination), he does what he wants. And it would be of maximal benefit to have the monkey not crash the vehicle in which you are sitting because he wants to see what happens.