I’m not into forgiveness in the same way that I’m into letting go. The last article I excerpted from and linked to Moving Past Pain mentions forgiveness quite a bit, especially in reference to healing yourself. While I respect the author greatly and I think she wrote superb mantras, I think this is off base in terms of my own spirituality regarding forgiveness.

I’m highly motivated to use the art of letting go in my daily worklife. In one position that I held, one of my bosses used to play favorites. She would invite only certain people to conferences or dinner at her house, buy Christmas gifts for certain people, reward certain people with gifts of pumpkin bread from Whole Foods, and give lavish raises to (you guessed it) only certain people. The rub? The certain people were never the same people. This created an environment where people were always competing to be her favorites.

It was definitely an irritating characteristic and didn’t create a workplace that was conducive to cooperation. And I can’t say I wasn’t pissed when I didn’t get a pumpkin bread. But if I held onto every slight in the workplace, I would be preoccupied with their perceived sins and not my work.

Some people would say there is also a lot to forgive of this boss. Here’s how letting go is different than forgiveness. Letting go is a one-way street. This is something I engage in all the time. I try to be persistent, but not obsessed. Eventually, if necessary, I can let go. It was only me and my mental processes involved in this. I let go of the pumpkin bread. After all, I can buy my own. And more importantly, I don’t like pumpkin bread.

But, on the other hand, forgiveness is a two way street. One person apologizes, another person forgives. Perhaps not immediately or even that year. If my boss had apologized to anyone in the office for her oversights, that would have been the beginning of forgiveness. But she never did. It takes two people and mutual actions to result in forgiveness. But often this is mistaken for letting go and it’s not the same process. It’s an important distinction.

Lastly, I’m reminded in high school when some of the born-again Christians would regularly tell me that they forgave me for not being Christian. Again, I didn’t apologize, so they can’t really forgive. One can only hope that they let go.