If charity begins at home, compassion begins with self. People make mistakes. We make mistakes. Some big, some bigger. While we are able to call upon the wisdom to forgive others, we are unable to reach for the strength to forgive our own selves. We are able to move past the past with others, but not with ourselves. We are able to, in sufficient time, become softer to the wrongs others had committed, but continue to bathe ourselves in as much loathing as before.

We need to understand this. Some mistakes might have done us irreparable damage. Damage that cannot be undone. Damage that we must suffer for the remaining of our lives. But the person who made those mistakes was not “us” of “today”. It was the “us” of “then”. We have to forgive that person. Even if we have to live with the damage, we don’t have to live with the guilt. Forgive the you of yesterday. Forgive yourself.

“If you can forgive others for having sometime wronged you, can’t you forgive yourself for something you’d done long ago? After all, you too, in the past, were another person.”

(c) Mickey Kumra