I am terrible to forgive myself.
Never good enough. I should have said that earlier or have done it in another way. Something better or simpler or more creative or more kind or useful, etc.
Alan Watts has a very simple point of view on this subject: no.
Alan Watts on forgiveness
We all make mistakes
We have all said things we want we did not do, do things we want we can cancel. And yet, if you look back honestly, you will see that at that time, with the understanding and the conscience you had, you were doing your best.
“To condemn yourself for the past is like reprimanding a child not to know the calculation.”
You move in life with the tools available at this time, with clarity – or lack of clarity – you had at the time. Each error was part of the path that brought you here.
The first step: self-compassion
Forgiveness does not start with big gestures, but with simple gratitude: you always do your best, even when you look clumsy or confused. To see this is softened. To soften is starting to forgive.
To forgive himself does not erase the past or does not pretend that it has not happened. He sees the past for what he was really – an experience alive. Each choice, each error, each hard word was not a crime against existence, but a step to learn to walk.
Put the stones
Most of us bear our mistakes like stones in a bag, dragging them year after year. We replay scenes in our heads, wishing to be able to modify the script. But the past is over. Learning opens the way to follow; Auto-Condamnation is a dead weight.
Compassion for yourself is to drop the stones and see that you are no longer the one that has stumbled – you are the one who learned.
This is the first step in freedom.
See the others through the same goal
What is true for yourself is true for others. People do not act with perfect clarity. They act from the limits of their conscience and the conditions that have shaped them. When someone acts in bitterness, it is because bitterness has taken root in their heart – often injuries that you may never see.
“To condemn them outright, it is to forget that they already live in their own punishment.”
Seeing this allows you to forgive without excusing harm. You can always move away, without carrying hatred in your heart.
Judgment vs understanding
The judgment is fast and easy. Understanding takes effort – he asks us to take a break, to imagine the inner world of another. It is the intelligence of empathy: to see yourself in another and another in yourself. Their anger, confusion and blindness are reflections of what you have worn at other times in your life.
“Forgiveness ceases to be a moral duty. It becomes a natural response.”
Break the injury chain
Pain reproduces as a contagion. Without conscience, we transmit what has been given to us. Forgiveness refuses to play this game.
Pardon says: “It stops here.”
This is how you recover the freedom of the endless rehearsal of the injury. You become the rupture of the chain – the point where the pain no longer multiplies.
Sorry as a liberation
Forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation. This often happens silently, in the privacy of your own heart. You can forgive someone and choose everything not to walk next to them.
“Resentment only burns the one who holds it.”
Letting Go pays not only the other person, but yourself. You are no longer linked to their history.
Empathy as the highest intelligence
Intelligence gains arguments. Empathy transforms hearts. He asks, What pain has given birth to this action? No one wakes up and chooses to be cruel; They get there through a network of causes that go back further than they can trace. See this dissolves the judgment and replaces it with understanding.
Unit and integrity
At the deepest level, forgiveness is not even a moral act. It is a recognition of the unity – that the one that hurts you is not really separated from you.
“To hate them is to hate part of yourself.”
In this vision, compassion flows as naturally as breathing. Forgiveness occurs alone because you see that there was never nothing separated to forgive.
Give life
When you stop asking for the perfection of yourself or others, you start to see the beauty of the clumsy dance of life. Pardon does not exchange the past; He releases his grip.
Forgive. Forgive the world. Not because it is noble, but because it is the only way for life to take place.
