Category: otherness

2022

My Word for 2022: Forgive

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After writing my last post, it got me thinking a lot about forgiveness. It’s been a topic that has been surfacing again and again in the last few months, and I’m thinking that I need to take note of it. 

I have a hard time with forgiveness. I’m sure everyone does to some extent, but I realized recently that my personality is wired to make it extra challenging. I’m an Enneagram 1 – and Ones are described as having a “strong, innate desire for fairness, accuracy, and order. They tend be bold advocates for the rights of others and when healthy, may challenge the status quo to make push for reforms and equality.” 

The book The Road Back To You calls Enneagram 1s “Reformers.” But another word that is also accurate is “Perfectionist.” Ones don’t like mistakes. They want things to be fair. Getting taken advantage of, or seeing another person get taken advantage of, is extremely aggravating for Ones. Ones often have issues with resentment and unexpressed anger.

All of that mixed together in one personality can make it very hard to forgive. I think a lot of Enneagram 1s also find it hard to offer forgiveness to themselves, due to their constant inner critic. 

Fairness and justice are wonderful things. Being an advocate for those who can’t advocate for themselves is awesome – and hooray to Ones for upholding those values. 

But it sure makes the world a hard place to live in sometimes. Life is not fair, it’s not always just. People are selfish and make mistakes. 

My personal focus for last year was “spiritual bravery.” I wanted to have more faith and courage in God. I wanted to release my desire to control everything all of the time. It was a good focus, and I’ve grown in faith and spiritual courage this past year. 

As I thought ahead to 2022, even though I was not super excited about it, all signs pointed to one word: Forgiveness. 

What were the signs, you may wonder? I had recently attended a Bible class at my church, and the teacher made the following statement:

“If you read everything that Jesus said in the Bible, and there’s not something that bothers you, you’re not paying attention.”

Randy Harris
Bible

He was specifically referencing Jesus asking us to forgive others, even those who don’t deserve it. (Matthew 18:21-22)

Then less than a week later, I found myself in a situation where I was really angry with a friend and needed to forgive her. I thought of a lot of reasons not to, and tried to rationalize with myself that she didn’t deserve for me to forgive her yet again. But then I remembered that Bible class, and I remembered what God calls me to do: forgive others. 

If I’m honest, I don’t want this to be my focus. (And that’s part of the reason why I am confident this is supposed to be my word for this year!) It’s going to be a challenge, and something that I am confident I will fail at many times.

But I know I need to be more intentional about fostering forgiveness, and I need to practice it more often so that hopefully down the road, it won’t be as difficult as it feels today. Honestly, I think the only way I’m going to make any progress at it is going to be through the grace of God, and his transforming power.

If you’ve grown up going to church or reading the Bible to any extent, you’ve probably heard many verses and sermons about forgiveness. So at this time, I won’t go into all the reasons why, from a Biblical perspective, we should forgive. (But if you’re interested, I found a site that goes into depth on 10 reasons why the Bible tells us to forgive – or you can always grab a Bible and do your own studying.)

My top reasons for wanting this to be my focus for this year do revolve around God and personal spiritual growth. But even if you don’t consider yourself a religious or spiritual person, there are still some great reasons to forgive others.

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Sorry board game

“What’s the statute of limitations on apologies?”

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Do you ever randomly find yourself wanting to apologize to people for things you did like 20 years ago?

HarryMetSally

There’s a scene from one of my favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally, where Harry asks the question, “what’s the statute of limitations on apologies?” He and Sally had met many years ago and had gotten off to a rocky start. Sally replies, “Ten years,” (the exact amount of time that had passed since they met). “I can just get it in under the wire,” says Harry, partly joking, but also partly serious.

Sometimes I’ll think back to elementary school or high school, and I’ll think about people I used to be friends with, but maybe I did something mean or stupid and we never talked again after that.

And now, looking back I’ll think, “why did I do that?” Sometimes it’s even more of an, “I can’t believe I did that!” kind of feeling.

I’ll admit, I’m occasionally tempted to find these people on social media and send them a message – but it just never seems right…

I recently rewatched The Office on Netflix for like the third time, and there’s an episode where Jim runs into a guy he hasn’t seen since the third grade. All during the episode Jim’s trying to avoid a conversation with this guy, and we eventually find out that Jim’s mom had told Jim he wasn’t allowed to be friends with this kid because he was in the “not-so-smart” kids’ reading group. Pam reassures Jim that he’s being ridiculous and that they are both grown-ups now so it doesn’t matter, and the scene eventually plays out where Jim is forced to confront his childhood friend.

Obviously, it doesn’t go well. Jim’s third grade friend is still mad that Jim considered him “too dumb” to be friends with. It’s overdone for dramatic effect, but I could totally see this happening in real life. There are certain people, who if I happened to run into them, their last memory of me might be from third grade. In their mind, I might still be that same person, instead of the person I am today – a person who has grown and matured to be more compassionate, empathetic, and socially aware – as probably almost all of us have since we were in third grade.

I tried to think of a person who, if I ran into them today, all I would remember when I saw them was something mean they did to me a long time ago. It wasn’t too hard to think of someone… there was this kid I knew when I was in 4th grade (he was in 5th), and we had an elective class together. His name was Patrick.

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An Open Letter to the Person Who Cut Me in the School Pick Up Line

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Dear person who cut in front of me in the after-school pick up line today,

What a sad day indeed to have witnessed such a calamity on this 25th day of August! I couldn’t believe my eyes when your red sedan swooped into the (very small) opening between myself and the silver van in front of me as we were inching closer to the school entrance. I honked, but you didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps I should have honked louder or more numerously than I did. Perhaps I should have gotten out and knocked on your window to let you know that you had committed a serious faux pas.

Have you ever been in a line before, dear red sedan driver? If you haven’t, I will gladly tell you how it works: first, you must take note of the end of the line (in this case, the last car in the pick up line) and then place yourself behind the last vehicle, thus yourself becoming now the last vehicle in line. Then you wait. (And wait and wait and wait some more.) As you are waiting, more cars will likely line up behind you (as is the proper way for a line to form), and then as the line moves, you will move up slowly to the front to pick up your elementary school student waiting for you.

The elementary student you picked up today has had lots of practice being in line – they were lined up waiting very nicely at the orange cone for you to arrive and pick them up. Perhaps you could ask this student how to properly wait in a line?

I admit, I did snap a picture of your car… and your license plate… as we ended up side by side in the two-laned pickup area. You didn’t seem to notice me, but seemed very focused on your steering wheel. I applaud your desire for vehicle safety (I can only assume that’s why you wouldn’t risk a glance at me.)

I also confess, that I had many ideas initially of what I could do with these pictures I obtained of your car. Post them to social media, maybe to the school district’s Facebook page? Make flyers and tape them up all over the elementary school? Make a “WANTED” sign in an old western style (that could be kind of fun!) Turn it into a meme?

It would, however, do me no good to provide you the justice you deserve, because then I would find myself becoming the type of person I don’t want to be. The fact that I entertained such vengeful ideas of reciprocation against you (as outlined in the prior paragraph) shows how easy it is to find oneself considering all sorts of evil against another person. How quickly we (I speak in terms of humankind) like to make enemies of one another!

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