Late in my life, I’ve discovered the paradoxical properties and the enormous power of gratitude and forgiveness.
Cost and benefit
When you tell someone that you are grateful for something they have done or have given you, you have gained nothing—nor have you lost anything—and they have gained some small benefit through your acknowledgment. When you perform some act out of gratitude, you have gained nothing and lost the time or resources that it took to do whatever you did. The recipient of your action has gained the benefit of whatever you did.
When you forgive someone for a harm that they’ve done you, you have gained nothing, and they have gained relief from whatever burden they were carrying for the wrong that they had done. It has cost you the time and trouble required to express your forgiveness and the risk of the dangerous consequences of reopening an old wound.
So gratitude and forgiveness seem to provide some benefit to the recipient and either a cost or for little benefit to the donor.
That’s the paradox.
Giving gratitude and forgiveness makes you richer, not poorer—providing you have plenty to give.
Utilitarian giving
“It is better to give than receive,” goes the saying. It comes from one attributed to Jesus in Acts 20:35. JC said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Better? Blessed? Whoever said it and whatever was said, it’s true whenever you have an abundance of whatever you are giving.
Jesus didn’t make the utilitarian argument, as far as we know. But I’ll make it for him. If you have a million dollars, the value of a dollar received is about zero. But the benefit to you of the dollar you give to someone else can be substantial if you believe that your dollar has now made the world better in some way. That’s providing that you care about making the world better. (If you don’t care about making the world better, then you’re a terrible person. I forgive you for being a terrible person. But please reconsider what you value.)
To make it better for me to give than to receive I don’t need gratitude, though gratitude is nice. I just need to believe that my dollar has made the world better. I don’t need to know that it has made the world better. The fact that is likely to have made the world better is enough. Every dollar has that potential. (And consciousness turns the potential into the actual) See: Sacrifice to realize potential
For someone who is impoverished, the value of a dollar received may be far greater than the value of a dollar given. So the rule is not invariant. But for anything for which I have an abundance—much more than I need—I can gain more by giving that thing than by receiving it. You can, too.
Abundance
I have more than enough love, so it is better for me to give love than to receive it. I have an abundance of knowledge—better to give (by writing, for example) than to receive (by reading.) I have an abundance of money—so better money than receive. (Although receiving money is nice because then I have more to give.) Deciding who to give to takes time (and practice), and I don’t have enough of either. But I’m working to become better at giving.
I have enough forgiveness. That is: I have done some things that are regrettable, disreputable, and shameful, and have been forgiven of them all. Not by Jesus or God, or even necessarily the person I have harmed, but by me. My imaginary God has forgiven me, too. So I’ve got forgiveness to spare. It’s yours.
Resentment, forgiveness, gratitude
“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die,” goes another saying attributed to Malachy McCourt. I’ve taken that poison with exactly that hope. The poison hasn’t killed them, and it’s made me sick. I’m not taking it anymore. And I’ve found that forgiveness is the antidote all that poison I’ve taken.
So I’ve made gratitude part of my daily practice. And whenever I have a chance to forgive someone—anyone—for anything, I take it.
Expressing gratitude does not reduce the gratitude I have available. Paradoxically, the more grateful I am, the more I can be grateful.
Expressing forgiveness does not reduce my ability to forgive. Paradoxically, the more I forgive others, the more I can forgive—including forgiving myself.
Judged by the average of humanity, I deem myself a pretty good person. Judged by the ideal of what a person could be, I’m deficient. Maybe horrible. I could be more courageous. I could work harder at what I care about. I could have more self-discipline. I could waste less time. If someone recorded every thought that went through my mind in a day, edited them down to the worst couple of minutes and posted them publicly you’d see: pride, envy, egotism, contempt, greed, pornography, irritation, flashes of anger, shame. They pop into my mind from time to time unbidden. They make me deficient.
I forgive myself.
Once upon a time, my mother did something that so offended me that I stopped talking to her. It went on for years. I was seething with justified anger. I cultivated the resentment that I had built growing up. I nurtured it. I could have done something about it, but I refused to. I hurt myself, my father, denied my kids the experience of their grandparents, trying to hurt my mother. I was taking poison and hoping she would die.
Finally, I came to my senses. I apologized. I did not ask for forgiveness. I just took responsibility for what I had done. Maybe she forgave me. Perhaps for her, there was nothing for her to forgive. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that I had faced a terrible version of myself, I had accepted responsibility, I had apologized, and I had forgiven myself. I decided this: If I can forgive myself for this, I can forgive anyone for anything. That was probably too grand. I am sure that there are people and acts that I would still find unforgivable. If someone did something horrible, I still might want to punish them or see them punished. But without resentment. There nothing that has happened that needs forgiveness and remains unforgiven. My aspiration remains: hold no resentment. Forgive what you can.
Gratitude and forgiveness: better to give than to receive.
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