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Last week I picked up Rabbi Rami’s GUIDE TO Forgiveness. I didn’t have any particular reason except it was short and to the point. I mean, who couldn’t use a little more forgiveness in their lives?
About half way through this little book, I hit the chapter, FORGIVENESS AND THE MAKING OF MEANING. As a certified meaning seeker I knew this chapter was written for me.
Life doesn’t come to us prepackaged. It is wild and chaotic and filled with joy and horror and surprise. Life doesn’t come to us predetermined. Things happen and we respond to what happens and our response creates a new reality to which a new response is due. Life isn’t given to us. It happens through us.
If this is as far as our analysis goes, however, life lacks purpose and meaning. It is what it is, and we are what we are, and there is nothing more to say about it. But there is something more to say, there is the story we tell.
A few years ago while attending the Promoting Passion Conference in Colorado, I heard one of my favorite people give a talk on how the “stories we tell ourselves shape who we are.” I hadn’t really considered this before, but it instantly resonated with me as the speaker went on to give personal examples. By the way, if you ever have the chance to meet Joel McKerrow, hug him and thank him for being an incredible human bravely walking out his giftedness.
Boil it down, the messages we absorb and repeat, from our singular viewpoint, shape who we are regardless if the messages are true or not. I may tell myself that someone doesn’t love me based on how I feel, but that doesn’t make it true. If asked, this person might be astounded that I had ever considered they didn’t care deeply for me.
Rabbi Rami goes on to say:
We are the stories we tell about ourselves. There may not be a thinker behind my thoughts, but the thoughts seem to weave themselves into a story that makes me the protagonist. I may not be the author of my thoughts, but I am the editor that turns them into a story. The challenge isn’t to control my thoughts and feelings, but to weave them into story that gives me a sense of purpose and meaning.
Life doesn’t come pre-storied. We have to make the story, and as we do so we create meaning for ourselves. The question is this: are you going to tell a story that casts you as the hapless victim or the courageous hero? If you play the victim you imagine that while you may have no control over life, others do. If you play the hero you know that while no one controls life, you always have the capacity to act with humility and compassion in the face of whatever happens. And acting with humility and compassion creates meaning.
And here’s where it starts getting good:
Life doesn’t have a preset meaning. Meaning is not something you inherit but something you invent. And you can’t invent it if your life is mired in grudges.
As long as you are trying to figure out why a loved one harmed you, you haven’t got the energy to figure out what to do next. And it is in the “what to do next” that meaning is made and life is well lived.
I want to live a life in all it’s rawness and not avoid it by blanketing it in some soft quilt of past-life karma or divine providence. When life is painful, I want to feel the pain. When it is joyous, I want to feel the joy. I want to live, as Ecclesiastes suggests, in tune with the moment. And when the moment changes, as it always does, I want to change along with it. But I can’t do that if I am tied to the past and weighed down with past hurts and ever-present grudges.
This is why forgiveness is crucial to right living: it frees you from the past that you might engage the present, both good and bad.
I spend a lot of time dwelling on my story, never questioning if it’s true. I often feel dissatisfied with my story.
My story may need some editing.
My story may need more forgiveness.
Ecclesiastes 3