FORGIVENESS -- By Ibtisam Barakat ابتسام بركات

Palestinian Sun Bird Oil Painting by Ismail Shammout

FORGIVENESS -- By Ibtisam Barakat ابتسام بركات

I understood forgiveness when I understood its opposite which is to stay stuck with the key in my hand, waiting for those who did the harm to "regret it", to "apologize", to "do something". But they don't.. The permission for me to move on is not up to them even if I thought so! Only I can give myself permission to not feel like a victim and to move on toward my goals and life, knowing that wounds are part of life.. an important part of life..

Forgiveness does not mean approving of the behavior that caused hurt, or trusting again those who hurt us if they have not changed dramatically. It simply means that one finally realizes she or he HAS all that it takes to heal one's life and need not wait for those who hurt us to heal us.... because they will not. Our waiting is only a waste of our lives..

We realize that we have the capacity to repair things using our own creative ways, brilliance and healthy relationships.. which we often discover at times of hardship.. And we learn something about living in the world with our intelligence ready to do its work, rather than refer to old formulas and rigidity of traditions and habits -- be they personal or social.

We learn to stop participating in disrespectful relationships right from the start because disrespect in any form is harmful and is a prelude to more harm.

Forgiveness means becoming "strong at the broken places," to put it in Hemingway's words, and wise at the places we previously were not wise. The biggest wisdom in my opinion is not to seek to do to others what was done to us.. But simply learn that the behavior that hurt is really a bad one, whether it comes from others or from us, and it should not be honored by being repeated.

That way we become leaders in the world, leading our lives and the consciousness of the planet to a more intelligent way of being. There is nothing moral about forgiveness. We are not better than others and they are not better than us.

Forgiveness is simply the most intelligent response to having been hurt because it gives us the reality -- that we are not victims -- before, during or after being hurt. So when we negotiate with life and others, we do it from a place of full power and entitlement to our full rights, not half or a quarter or even 99%.

Because we are not victims, WE DO NOT BEG! We never beg for solutions or respect or validation. We find new, real, honest and powerful solutions. We experiment with possibilities. We initiate. We change our minds. We change our behaviors. We research. We make mistakes. We make better proposals next. We work WITH others but we do not work FOR them disregarding ourselves!

And we do not wait for others to donate solutions and expect to be treated as equals too. They will not treat us as equals if we wait for them to LEAD our lives for us. And the choice will have been ours to act "helpless" when we have everything anyone ever had or has -- our creativity and will to live in full dignity, possibility and wellness. We too can invent things no one has ever heard of -- in terms of thoughts, objects, behaviors or solutions. Why not!

And we never settle for anything less than our full rights. We also support the full rights of all others. We never ever settle for others being treated as better or worse than us.

We are human beings who respond to life by learning and improving and discovering more of ourselves and more of how to live well with others, all others, in the world. That is why we forgive. And the exciting journey continues..

In freedom and forgiveness,

-- Ibtisam Barakat 2010.