Forgiveness of the Self We Blame

Self Determination

I recall being twelve years old and being confident that I’d achieve millionaire status by age forty. I was sure that I’d attend law school and then become a professional singer or business owner a few years later. But I hadn’t. By forty, I still hadn’t landed on any business idea with confidence that would make me millions. Somewhere along the way, I’d relinquished my opportunity for self-determination: the process of actively choosing and acting on one’s own path in a multitude of possible ways forward. Due to fear, I kicked into survive-mode focusing on what was going wrong and reaching for the guard rails instead of thrive-mode in search of options and opportunity. My shyness and insecurity were the worst kind of game-changers for me.

Though my twelve-year old self desired money which symbolized freedom and stability, she expected that the money would come from work that made her happy. And this was the disappointment. It rarely did, and perhaps it would have had she had to the courage to engage in the act of self-determination. Looking back, I’d “worked to forty, but I had not “planned to forty.” I had not engaged in active self-determination which includes the responsibility for devising and executing a plan instead of allowing life to unfold in uncertain directions. Without self-determination, we rob ourselves of the pleasure to try and try again at creating the life we choose for ourselves.

Forgiveness precedes everything. Forgiveness is for the self that we blame today, which is making us feel terrible about yesterday. Blame is the glue that keeps us stuck. We have to acknowledge and accept that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t have or simply didn’t choose differently. But now, there’s nothing left to say than it’s okay. We’ve still got today, and we can do something different. We have the power.