To Understand All Is To Forgive All

Forgiveness can be a very challenging part of our lives, especially when people hurt us or those that we love. But with the gift of understanding, we can move in the directions of healing our hearts and creating peace in our lives.

(Please note, this is a talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Today,

I'm going to be dealing with a difficult topic that some of you are just not going to agree with.

Because it's about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is such a powerful emotion.

It can be very difficult to embrace and many of us don't want to even think about it.

When someone hurts us,

When someone hurts people that we love,

We want them to hurt too.

But if you read the title of this talk,

Then you're probably a little bit interested because I call it,

To Understand All is to Forgive All.

I know what I'm going to say next may be very upsetting to people,

But please hear me out.

When people hurt us,

Or people that we love,

Believe it or not,

It may be a very crazy,

Insane reason,

But they have reasons for what they're doing.

And their reasons in no way justify what they're doing,

They no way excuse what they're doing,

And they may even need to be punished for what they're doing.

But what they're doing,

At some level,

Has reasons behind it.

Again,

I'm not saying they're justified,

I'm just saying if,

Perchance,

We had walked in their shoes our entire lives,

We may have come up with the same reasons they did.

You may be saying,

That's crazy,

Dr.

Puff,

I would never do what other people do like terrorists or rapists or child molesters.

And I know that's true,

But what if you had been abused as a child or brainwashed with horrible,

Negative thoughts throughout your life,

Or because of your conditioning or your genetics,

When you took a substance like alcohol or drugs,

Your personality completely changed and a very dark side came out.

Again,

It doesn't excuse the behavior,

But it can help us understand why someone would do such horrific things to other people.

But why this is hard to adopt,

Why this is hard to see light through this filter of understanding is we have a tendency to see things as black and white.

That one person is completely right and the other person is completely wrong.

And of course there are things that are absolutely wrong and absolutely right,

Like child molestation.

That is absolutely,

Positively wrong.

But understanding why a person would ever choose to molest a young child,

Particularly if it was their own child,

Like their own daughter or son,

There has to be some reasonings to drive them to that point.

What would cause a person to do such horrific damage to another person?

I mean,

Is there a mental illness there?

Were they on substances?

Were they themselves perhaps tortured or tormented as a child and they were just acting out on what they were exposed to as a child?

There's many reasons that people do things to others.

And in less severe cases,

Things that we face all the time,

Irritations,

Fights,

Arguments with family and friends that we may have all the time,

There usually,

If not always,

Are two sides to these fights.

I've been very good at not taking sides over my life.

I can usually see both sides of any argument quite easily.

And I think if you keep an open mind,

There really are two perspectives.

I have friends that truly really don't like each other for very specific reasons.

And yet I can understand both of their reasons from their point of view.

People have points of view.

I'm not saying that we have to always understand them,

But I am encouraging us to realize that it may not be black and white.

I think when we go through life as things being black and white,

We're going to suffer and we're going to be way more likely to lash out at other people.

And you know the most wonderful thing about this?

If you really start giving this a try,

Again,

There can be consequences of people's behavior.

I get that.

That's why we have courts.

That's why we have police officers.

That's why we have governments.

We have a lot of things in place,

Lawyers,

To help keep things on the straight and narrow.

However,

In the meantime,

When we are going through challenges,

Whatever they may be,

If we're able to realize that there is another point of view,

Not that we agree with it,

But there is another point of view,

It helps keep us calm.

We just don't get upset anymore.

We may actually do the exact same thing.

We may call the police on the person.

We may sue them.

We may do lots of things,

Not speak to them for a while,

But we're going to do it calmly because we're going to realize that though we don't agree with their point of view,

We realize from their perspective there is a point of view.

Again,

It's not that it's right.

It's just that if we had walked in their shoes our entire lives,

There is a high probability we probably would be doing the exact same thing they are.

A lot of times misunderstandings or anger comes out of just not seeing things from the same perspective as the other person.

Let's say for example one person really values being on time and the other person doesn't.

I remember going to a wedding once where a distant relative of mine,

He and his family showed up as the wedding was concluding.

I know he really loved the person that was getting married,

But in his world being on time wasn't that important.

When he got there,

He spent a lot of time,

He and his family,

Talking to the bride and groom.

You could tell he really loved them.

It's just he saw it differently than a lot of us would.

Being on time to a wedding is pretty important,

But for him,

Even though it was important,

He didn't mean to hurt the bride and groom by being there late.

He was just late because he's late to everything.

He wasn't trying to be hurtful.

He was just being who he is.

It may have hurt people,

That is true,

But that wasn't his intent.

Here's another story.

I knew this lady once who was a beautiful soul,

Very kind,

Very loving.

She had one sister that got along pretty well for the most part.

There definitely was some jealousy going on,

But overall,

They got along.

When her parents died,

They had one piece of jewelry that was magnificent.

It was from,

I believe,

Her great-grandfather.

He had been part of the gold rush and he had this huge piece of gold that he had actually found made into a necklace.

The one,

It was worth a lot,

And two,

It was priceless because how many people have a piece of gold from the gold rush?

Well,

Her older sister really felt that she wanted it and my friend thought it should go to her.

I'm telling you,

They probably were never going to talk to each other again because of this gold piece of jewelry.

She came to me because she knew I was good at solving problems.

This is what I suggested.

They would take turns keeping it.

One would keep it for one year and the next year,

She would give it to her other sister for a year and they would just go back and forth with the piece of jewelry.

They both ended up really liking my suggestion and this is what they did.

Instead of never talking to each other again,

They remained close until my friend accidentally was killed in a car accident.

People have perspectives.

Sometimes it is a mental illness.

Sometimes it is drugs.

It doesn't excuse the behavior,

But it helps us understand the behavior.

When we see things from others that just don't make sense to us,

That cause us incredible angst,

Anxiety,

Stress,

Or anger,

We realize that we don't agree with the behavior,

But we can begin to understand there is another perspective.

And again,

It may not change anything.

We may still do exactly what we're going to do.

But what it helps us to do is relax and with time,

Even forgive other people for the horrific things that they do to us because hanging on to anger,

Hanging on to hatred really is like a poison that we're hanging on to.

It's going to hurt us as much as it hurts anyone else.

And if we truly are seeking happiness in our lives,

We have to learn to let go of that anger because if we don't,

It will hurt us.

I know this is going to be hard to hear,

But actually people are doing their best.

And their best may be absolutely horrific.

No kidding.

But given their circumstances,

Given what they've gone through,

Given what they're facing,

Put it all together,

And there is a sense of,

Yeah,

They probably did do their best and now they're suffering for what they did.

But if we can just perhaps get a glimpse of this,

It allows us to not have so much hate burning through our veins.

And we can,

With time,

Perhaps even find some forgiveness for these people that hurt the people that we love or hurt us.

I know it's hard.

I know it's a challenge.

But if we're able to perhaps a little bit embrace this,

I do think we'll find a lot more peace and happiness in our hearts.

I want to end with a beautiful story of understanding and forgiveness.

This story is about Charlotta Evans and her three-year-old son,

Cashin,

Was killed in a gang-related shooting that had gone wrong.

The killer's name was Raymond Johnson,

And even though he was only 15 years old,

He was sentenced to life in prison for what he did.

Over the years,

Raymond would write to Charlotta,

Expressing his deep remorse for what he had done to her son.

He really worked on improving himself.

At the time of the arrest,

He had a third-grade education,

But he ended up getting his GED,

And he had extremely good behavior as a prisoner.

Normally,

Families aren't allowed to meet or discuss anything with the killer.

But in the state of Colorado,

They started a pilot program to see if there could be some healing.

When Raymond was 33 years old,

He had a face-to-face meeting with Charlotta and her son Kelvin for the first time.

As you can probably imagine,

There was a lot of pain and healing that went on during that eight-hour first meeting.

But for Charlotta,

It was extremely healing,

And she went on to become the president and founder of the RE-Creation Center,

Because she felt that people,

Children like Raymond,

Who was 15 years old,

Shouldn't be sentenced for life for things that they did when they were so young.

Because of all her work,

Raymond was eligible to get released from jail and lead his life.

The most beautiful thing about it all is,

Because she met with Raymond so many times while he was in prison,

Is she wrote,

I can truly say that I love the young man,

And I love him enough to take him as a son and care for him.

In other words,

She's adopting the boy that killed her son.

Now,

Of course,

Charlotta is an angel incarnate.

Most of us could never do this in a million years.

But it is possible.

It is possible to forgive people for what they've done to us.

And you know the most wonderful thing about forgiveness?

It lightens our hearts,

And we can go through life with less hate,

Less hostility,

And just realize that in the course of life,

To understand all is truly to forgive all.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Absolutely such a eye opening and beautiful point of view! Thank you

Excellent and inspiring

This was incredibly helpful and inspiring. I can use this in my personal life. Let go of todays conflict and move on. Deep deep gratitude

Eureka! This is life changing for me. Thank you💓🙏🏾

This was great!!! I definitely didn’t fall asleep to it I was wide awake listening! Lol
Thank you!

Thank you very much 🙏