Last year, I was laid off. At the time, I felt the
circumstances were unfair and that they had been for awhile. We’d had three
years of unprecedented success, and I had played a key role. However, for the
first time in eight years, I was having significant problems working with some
of my colleagues and I was failing to impress our new board president. Although
I was exceeding the agreed upon goals of my job, I continually felt like there
were other expectations that I wasn't meeting because they were not being communicated
clearly, if at all.
I was livid when I received the news. Even though my former
employer gave me a month’s notice and a severance package, I left that very
day. I knew that if I stuck around I would burn a few bridges. Then the very
next day, someone close to me announced he had two weeks left to live.
In my grief, I went back to school. My grades sky rocketed.
I was pulling 100 averages in tough science courses and my professors told me I
should think about medical school. Instead of helping me to move on, my grades just served as further
evidence that my layoff was unfair. And as the weeks turned into months, I
remained angry and full of blame towards my former colleagues.
Even though I’ve been through trials before, the fact that
life is unfair and we all go through hard times eluded me. I mistakenly felt
that because I had contributed a lot to the community through my nonprofit
work, because I was smart and made good choices, somehow that made me special
and immune from bad things happening when I appeared to have some degree of
control over the outcome.
I have always prided myself on my ability to forgive, my
resilience and courage. Yet this time, all of these things seemed out of reach.
I was bewildered that I found forgiveness impossible. The strength I had taken
for granted had abandoned me.
And I was missing a big opportunity. A lot of eyes were on
me and how I would react. Unlike my hero Nelson Mandela whose suffering makes job
loss look easy, I was missing that key moment to show grace and dignity in the
face of trial.
The good and bad life brings us doesn’t always depend on
what we look like, who our family and friends are, what choices we have made or
what we have accomplished. I’ve known many good people who died young from
illness, smart and hardworking people who have lost their jobs, loving and
responsible parents who have experienced the death of a child, and the list
goes on.
Who am I that this
shouldn’t happen to me?
It is in responding to our circumstances that defines who we
are and who we will become. And the circumstances revealed that I was
impossibly entitled and self righteous.
Self righteousness. After taking a very hard look at myself
and comparing how I reacted to my setback compared to others who gracefully
accepted their trials as a part of life and moved on, I realized this was the
reason why I have not been able to forgive. I had forgotten that I didn’t have
any right to judge others.
Forgiveness is truly an act of humility. It is recognizing
that we ourselves are not perfect; we will someday have to make decisions that are
not fair or will negatively impact others, and the inevitability that we will hurt
others even when we try our hardest not to.
It is recognizing that we too, need
to be forgiven.
