Accept And Forgive by Sally Bramptom

I write an advice column for a newspaper and so many of the letters I get are seething with resentment, usually against mothers, ex-husbands and lovers (in that order). You can feel the corrosion of anger burning through the words – insistent, self-righteous and outraged – just as you can feel the damage it’s doing. If we’re hanging on to resentment, we may just as well open the door and say, come right in and live rent-free in my head. We lose peace of mind in self-justification. We never gain it. Most of us intuitively know that, which is why many of the letters plead, ‘I want to let go, but how?’ Some aim for the loftier heights of forgiveness: ‘I know I ought to forgive, but I can’t.’

Oh yes, forgiveness. I’ve never much liked the word. I find it too bossy and patronising. As Oscar Wilde put it, ‘Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.’ We beg for forgiveness or we grant forgiveness and it seems to me, in that imbalance of power, that nobody wins. Abject apology and overbearing superiority have never made for a happy relationship. Either we feel tainted by humiliation or, at heart, feel uneasy even in the momentary satisfaction of holding out the regal, ringed finger of forgiveness to be kissed.

I prefer the word acceptance simply because I believe it’s where true reconciliation lies. If we can accept each other as we are – flawed, fragile, damaged and human – we might come somewhere close to understanding. If we can let go of resentment without begging or demanding, we may discover enough clarity to see where the problem lies – usually with both of us. As Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian mystic, put it in one of my favourite poems, ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing; there is a field. I will meet you there.’

I sent that poem to my mother with whom I had enjoyed a long relationship of crushing resentment. It bounced off her like an Indian rubber ball. ‘How lovely, darling,’ she said. But then my mother has no awareness about her own behaviour or the internal anger I guarded for years. I knew it was doing me no good so I began to struggle with the idea of forgiveness and discovered that, for me, it was an imperative too far. I should forgive her. I must forgive her. That’s when I grew to embrace the concept of acceptance. If I could just accept her as she is, however difficult and demanding, and see beyond the behaviour (and what might have caused it in some long-ago past) to the person behind, I might find the compassion to understand and love her. And, these days, I do.

I wish I could say it was my own wisdom that brought me to that green field of understanding but it was the words of Buddhist monk and writer Jack Kornfield, ‘Letting go is not getting rid of. Letting go is letting be.’ It flicked a light switch in my head. I let go of the struggle, of the ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ of forgiveness. Now I try to accept people and life just as they are. I try to let them be.