You can’t live a full life if you can’t learn to forgive.  This isn’t just about obedience to God, it’s about the order of things.  Your body keeps tabs and unforgiveness causes undue stress and usually hurts you more than the person you aren’t forgiving.  That’s not to say that forgiveness is easy.  If it were we wouldn’t have any trouble doing it.  Some of us just force forgiveness upon ourselves and try to do it with grit and determination.  That rarely works.  In fact, the first step is to become the type of person who forgives.  This is the first step in any type of formative change really.  Ego is generally what keeps us from doing what we should be doing.  There is a constant sense that we are being wronged or that we deserve to be treated a certain way or deserve to have certain things (watch out for a future blog post on the word deserve).  But really what has any of us done to deserve anything in this life?  If you really look deep inside yourself, you’ll realize that in some ways you are just as bad as the person you are angry with.  We are all imperfect, and what I’ve also learned over the years is that we are all operating under our own understanding, upbringing, or culture until we break away from the parts of those things that don’t serve us.  Seeing the world that way allows me to have more compassion and empathy for other people, even those I used to think had wronged me.  Most of the time the other person isn’t even aware that they have wronged us.  And here’s the kicker if you’re ready for it…most of the time they haven’t.  Whatever they did was something that we interpreted as a slight, caused by our own biases, opinions, or ego.  Our thinking that we deserve anything in this world causes us to create hurts and slights where they don’t exist.  I emphasize this is the case MOST of the time.  There are certainly times when people actually do hurt us and can cause great harm.  If they care about you and want to reconcile with you then things are easy.  But what if they don’t care?  What if they don’t want to reconcile?  Are you going to send yourself to an early grave over it?  Forgiveness is not just for the person who wronged you.  If they are repentant and want to mend the relationship then it certainly is for their benefit.  That amounts to some percentage of the time.  But 100% of the time, forgiveness is for you.  If you want to be your healthiest self, if you want to live the Dynamic Life, you must learn to forgive and let go, because all of that anger and frustration is being stored somewhere in your body and someday it’s going to show up and you’ll pay the price, not the other person.  Again, it starts with formation.  It’s possible I put the cart in front of the horse with this post, but this is what was on my mind today.  Become the type of person that doesn’t even take offense, and forgiveness becomes a whole lot easier.  Learn gratitude (again, watch for another post on that).  Gratitude is the ultimate ego destroyer.  When you truly are grateful for what you have you worry less about what you don’t have, including apologies from people that have hurt you.