The freedom bought by forgiveness is worth much more than the price of your pride. Anyone can be made a slave to resentment, but that servitude is particularly dangerous for the addict. Resentment is the “number one offender,” pushing active addicts towards acting out and those in recovery back towards the downward spiral of relapse and becoming “reactivated.”
Unforgiveness
can quickly escalate into an intense obsession that takes up a great deal of
time and emotional energy. In a sense, the offending party continues to hurt
you for the entirety of the grudge-holding process. As long as they are allowed
to live rent-free in your head, they are “winning” and you’ve victimized
yourself substantially more than the offense itself ever could. Unforgiveness is an illness
with which you infect your own life.
In terms of pure return on investment, you can’t find much better return than that found with forgiveness. It costs you nothing that you can’t stand to lose anyway and what you receive is priceless. We hold on to resentment and unforgiveness for illogical reasons and to let go of them brings our universe back into balance and harmony. Ultimately our stubborn pride is the bottom-line cost of letting go.
The act of
forgiveness is one of setting yourself free to move on from the offense and the
offending party (if you so choose). You are bound to the incident and the
offender for as long as you choose to carry your unforgiveness. You then become
your own worst enemy because you are enslaving yourself with your
refusal to forgive and move on from the incident or behaviors. You’ve become
beholden to the grudge.
Mentally,
emotionally and spiritually you are a slave to your unforgiveness. You alone can
also choose to set yourself free from it once you give yourself permission. You must emancipate yourself from the bonds of resentment and
unforgiveness, because until you do you’ll never truly live in freedom.
