Clean your slate

Unpopular opinion: Everyone deserves a clean slate

Being forgiven by anyone you've wronged is a completely different animal, but just because you hurt someone and they can't forgive you does not mean you don't still deserve a happy and fulfilling life as long as you don't continue to hurt that person or someone else.

Everyone deserves to be happy even if the choices they've made have hurt people, as long as they've done everything they can to mitigate the pain inflicted and to repair the damage they couldn't foresee/avoid.

It may be hard to pull off, it may be uncomfortable, and it may seem impossible, but everyone deserves the opportunity to clean the slate and start fresh, no matter the mistakes they've made as long as they have acknowledged their mistakes and can avoid repeating them next time.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately with my impending divorce. I hurt my ex-husband when I finally decided I couldn't stay married to him for the rest of our lives like we promised. He hurt me in other ways leading up to that decision. Neither of us behaved perfectly, but on paper I'm the one asking for the divorce even though he wanted to remain married. In some people's eyes this makes me a Bad Person. They feel I don't deserve to heal, to move on, to be happy - because I hurt him. These people do not know the whole story, and no one ever will, including the people who do support me and my decision (love you all more than I can put into words). You can never know everything someone has gone through or everything they're currently experiencing. You can't know another person so completely that you can know if they are Good or Bad. All you know are their public actions.

By no means am I some kind of moral or philosophical expert. I'm not saying this opinion of mine holds up when confronted with terrorists and serial rapists and all the other varieties of monsters we coexist with in this world (for Heaven's sake, we elected a deplorable moron to be President). It seems everywhere we look today there is cause for alarm and doubt about motives and judgement about innocence or guilt for one thing or another.

When dealing with your (seemingly) garden variety human, though, we all deserve to be happy if we're just trying our best to be human. This can be very difficult to accept, but think about someone you've decided is a Bad Person in your life (we all have one if we're being truthful). Ask yourself if there are any ways you can imagine to explain or justify the behavior you've deemed to be Bad. I'm not saying these things are true or that they make up for the Bad behavior, I'm just asking you to entertain the idea that this Bad Person is just as human as you are.

Then, just for fun, try putting yourself in that person's shoes and try to forgive yourself.

Depending on the person you're thinking of you may find it an impossible task, but the point of the experiment is not necessarily to ultimately forgive that person - this exercise is meant to flex your compassion muscles because of one important fact: there is almost certainly something you have done in your life where you have been convinced that you are a Bad Person.

So.

As painful as it will be, sit with that for a while. Ask and answer every question you hurl at yourself about whatever it is you did that was so Bad. Don't cut yourself slack on excuses, but try to honestly get to the bottom of that judgement. Self forgiveness is the hardest because you know all the terrible things you've thought and felt and said and done.

If you still come to the conclusion that what you've done is unforgivable, think about reaching out to whoever you hurt and ask if there's something you can do for them - even something completely unrelated to the hurt you caused. If you decide there's something you should have done differently that you can still change or do now, make a plan and go do that thing. Use this as an opportunity to be the best human you can be. Take whatever you've done, and make it into something positive in any way you can.

You probably won't be able to accomplish this task in one sitting. That's okay too. The point here is to be at least incrementally more self-aware and compassionate when you're done. You'll likely find that some the grudges and hurts you hold against others are tied to things that you don't like about yourself that you're projecting. Success in this exercise is actually as simple as giving it an honest attempt. This is probably the most difficult part of personal growth to tackle. It's going to take time and effort and repetition, but I promise you that it will make you a more compassionate, empathetic, and overall more kind version of yourself. The slower you are to anger, the more you can contribute to fixing the larger problems in the world. The less reactionary you are, the more clear-headed you'll be assessing facts and making decisions.

The Golden Rule has always been to treat others the way you want to be treated, so the same should apply in reverse: treat yourself the way you would like others to treat you. You deserve forgiveness as long as you are willing to work towards forgiving yourself and towards acknowledging and fixing your mistakes. It's okay to ask for help, because none of us can get through everything in life alone.

Wipe away your own mistakes, real or imagined. Forgive yourself for being a flawed human and start being the best you can be today.

Clean your own slate, and then clean someone else's while you're at it.

You never know what we might be able to achieve together.

What's the most difficult thing you've been able to forgive about someone else? About yourself? What are you going to do with your clean slate today?