To Err is human. To forgive..not so much

I had to weigh in on the Tiger Woods although I didn’t feel like there was any­thing he par­tic­u­larly needed to say to the pub­lic about his behav­ior. I have writ­ten about this before in a post called (Detroit) Lions, Tiger (Woods), and (Chicago) Bears…Oh My.

After view­ing his state­ment I was touched and sad­dened about how it must have felt to admit that you have cheated mul­ti­ple times not only to a room full of peo­ple, but no doubt mil­lions of peo­ple who will view it today and for years to come. I cer­tainly believe he was wrong for what he has done, but if a per­son apol­o­gizes and tries to do his best not to repeat past mis­takes can we for­give?

Of course after the inter­view the heads started talk­ing. Some pos­i­tive and some neg­a­tive about his words. It got me to think­ing about mis­takes. I wrote about them as well just recently. I seem to write about them often because I have made many regret­table mis­takes in my life­time. But when you think about mis­takes and the fact that we all make them, really who are we to judge? Who are we to in any way judge any­body else for the things that they do. I’m not say­ing we advo­cate bad things with the atti­tude that “every­body makes mis­takes”. I’m say­ing who can hon­estly say that they have the right to sit in judg­ment of any one else?

This post is not a defense of Tiger Woods. What it is about is that while most peo­ple are eager to agree that to err is a very human trait they them­selves are not quick to for­give. Humans have the ten­dency to be judg­men­tal for years over the things oth­ers have done while expect­ing com­plete atone­ment for their own mis­takes. Forgiveness for many has become sort of a four-​letter-​word. Some peo­ple have had hor­ri­ble things done to them and believe it impos­si­ble to for­give the per­pe­tra­tors. Is that really so? Do we har­bor bad feel­ings towards peo­ple who may have made a mis­take against us?

I’ll give you my own per­sonal exam­ple. I dreamed the other night about a child­hood friend who used to be some­one who was very untrust­wor­thy. In the dream my friend was up to their old ways. I actu­ally woke up mad at them. It’s been some ten plus years since I have spo­ken with this friend because we just sim­ply lost touch. But, obvi­ously in my sub­con­scious I still think of this per­son in a neg­a­tive light.

Thinking about this my goal is to try to be truly for­giv­ing keep­ing in mind that to err is human, but to for­give is nec­es­sary.

Thanks for read­ing,