Could forgiveness be a key to happiness?

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, both giving and receiving, lately.  In my journey to rediscover my identity I seem to have stumbled across a couple of roadblocks and despite my best efforts it doesn't seem as if I am going to be able to get through my identity work without some forgiveness. Believe me, I would really just like say, "yeah, whatever" or give the memories a swift kick in the… but that doesn't seem to be working this time. It's kind of like in the movie "Groundhog Day" and I seem to be stuck in repeat mode. So, I guess it's time to face the music.

I thought it might be good to start with understanding what forgiveness really means. There seem to be a lot of general ways to define forgiveness: burying the hatchet, letting bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, stop resenting, make peace, and on, and on. Webster's defines forgiveness as "the ability to forgive". Um, ok. That seems helpful.  So, what does it mean to forgive? Well, apparently (according to Webster) "forgiving" is: allowing room for error or weakness. Hmm. Not sure if that makes more sense but it does seem simple enough. 

Since Webster wasn't helping all that much I thought I'd give Google a try. Google knows everything right? When I Google forgiveness I get 56.8 million (yes, million) results in .19 seconds. Great. This is gonna take longer than I thought. (Did I mention I'll probably be working on patience next?)

With all this information, I'm wondering if forgiveness is a conscious choice, a decision to be made or is it an emotion you feel when your heart is ready to let go of blame, hate, fear...? Negative emotions can really make your heart feel heavy. But is it up to your heart to decide when to let go or does this require some conscious effort on the part of your brain? 

Hmmm. Maybe this is a job for Oprah. 

I saw an episode of Oprah once where she defined forgiveness as: "giving up the hope that the past could have been any different." Now that is an interesting definition. It seems to imply that whatever happened was meant to happen and you couldn't have changed it. That may be true but I believe it's our choices lead us to outcomes, both good and bad. And we can't change those outcomes. Well, duh. Of course we can't change the past. To be fair, it would be nice to have one of those hot tub time machines for a "rewind" though! Since that doesn't seem possible, we have to be able to accept what happens and move on.  

That may be easier said then done. Sometimes the choices we make lead to an aftermath we never saw coming and cause us great pain. Sometimes we have to be able to forgive ourselves for those choices. That seems to be the hardest for me. Especially when the choices you have made led to a less than desirable outcome.

I don't much care for the "giving up the hope" part of Oprah's definition.  That seems like denial or maybe I just think hopelessness is sad. Either way, I don't necessarily agree with that part. However, I can see it more as "accepting  that the past could not have been any different." I think this works for me because it allows me to accept responsibility for the role I played in the outcome and also to see that, good or bad, what happened is in the past and it can't be changed. To spend time trying to change it or beating myself up over it isn't going to make it different. What I can do is try to understand what I can do differently in the future to get a different result.  

Thinking about "accepting that the past could not have been any different",  I can accept that I played a part in what happened through the choices I made and I also understand that I wasn't the only one making choices.  If I can accept those things can I also accept that what happened was meant to happen? Perhaps those choices, those outcomes led me to where I am today, led me to become who I am today. Perhaps my identity isn't based in the past but is something that is emerging with each day filled with new choices and new outcomes. Hmmm. Perhaps.