Issue #135 Forgiveness isn’t what you think it is.

All it took was one phone call and I knew I was going to have to shut down my business.

I will never forget that day. It was Q1 of 2008, and our team had just returned from our annual buying trip in Hong Kong where we had met with our biggest customer, Walmart.  We had worked with their buying team to secure programs for the season ahead and now we were simply waiting for the orders to start flowing in. However things were quiet; in fact too quiet.

My wife Kelly, who was the lead on their account, walked into my office after returning from a meeting with one of the buyers. She had a grave look on her face as she told me that Walmart had dropped us from their program. She was informed, that the Divisional Merchandise Manager had instructed his team to stop buying from our company.

I sat there in shock, suddenly overwhelmed by a sick feeling that was followed by hot flashes and a cold sweat.

I picked up the phone and called the Walmart executive.

I asked him straight out if it was true that he had directed his team to no longer support us. He confirmed it. Then he gave me his justification, saying something about their policy of getting to the lowest price for the customer. 

I listened, and still in a state of disbelief, I blurted out: "Do you realize I am going to lay off the majority of my staff today because of this decision? Family breadwinners are going home tonight without a job."

There was a pause. Then he said: "You will have to do what is in the best interest of your business."

I hung up the phone furious. In my mind, he had become the villain; the man who had just handed our business a death sentence. That belief took root, and for years afterward I carried the anger and bitterness with me, convinced I was justified in holding on to it.

The Comfort of Being a Victim

Looking back now, I am embarrassed to admit how good it felt to hate him.

There is a strange comfort in having someone to blame when things go wrong in your life. When your business collapses, when you have to lay off most of your staff, when creditors go unpaid and when the doors finally close; a villain gives you somewhere to put the pain. He became my explanation, the reason I could point to argue that none of it was my fault.

That felt like power, and for a while I believed it. But it wasn't power, it was a trade. I had handed him control over a part of my life that he didn't even know he had.

That's the thing about holding resentment as a victim, which isn’t always clear at first. It only hurts in one direction. I was the one carrying it and I was the one waking up with it. I was the one letting it occupy space in my head, rent free, while he went on with his life, completely unaware of how much real estate he was taking up in my mind. 

A Different Kind of Weight

I have written before about the difference between being at the mercy of circumstances and being at the mercy of a person. They seemingly do not carry the same weight.

When a market shifts, the work is to accept what is outside your control and then to own what is inside it. That is hard, but relatively clean as there is no face nor name attached to it. 

However when there is a voice on the other end of the phone that is delivering what appears to be an unfair blow it lands with more gravity.  He was not a market condition; he was a person who, in my mind, had done something egregious to me. 

And that is when we choose to blame. Whether it is an external circumstance or another person, when we have a place to focus our frustration it initially feels like relief. 

The problem is that blame leads to bondage. When you blame others for your lot in life, you remain blind to owning your part of the story, and it leads to a bitterness that holds you captive while quietly stealing your joy.

The truth is that the only path that releases you from this bondage is not strategy. It is forgiveness.

Getting there, though, is easier said than done. CS Lewis put it simply: "Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive." 

For years I had heard pithy phrases like "forgive and forget" and I thought I understood forgiveness but it turns out true understanding is far more nuanced.

The Gift That Goes Both Ways

Recently, as part of our Full Spectrum mastermind, we have been focused on key elements required to build healthy relationships. As part of it, the topic of forgiveness has come up, and Vijay offered up an explanation that I believe is truly profound.

Forgiveness is something we choose to give, and in choosing to give it, it becomes a gift that releases us from the weight of being a victim or being bound to the circumstance. It does not require the other person's involvement, their apology, or even their awareness. It is not saying what they did was acceptable, rather it is simply choosing to stop letting the wound own us.

It is important we do not conflate forgiveness with reconciliation and trust. Forgiveness is something I get to decide on my own, however reconciliation and trust require both people to be involved. 

Forgiveness tended to properly can in fact open the door to (or possibility of) reconciliation and even an eventual rebuilding of trust over time, but that does not have to be the case, and it should never be the condition we place on offering it.

Forgiveness also does not mean a lack of consequence. Consequences are a byproduct of choices; when we choose our actions, we choose the consequences that come with them. They are two ends of the same stick, and forgiving someone does not erase that. What forgiveness does is free us from being held in bondage to the event, the circumstance, or the person we have given power over to. 

The consequence may remain, however my captivity to it does not have to.

Reconciliation is a rebuilding of a relationship, and it requires both people willing to do the work. It cannot be forced, faked, or rushed. Some relationships get reconciled. Some don't. Some may not even be safe enough to attempt reconciliation. Likewise, trust is earned over time with both people choosing to invest in repairing what was broken, and even then it rebuilds at its own pace.

A Handshake That Rewrote the Story

After the company closed, time passed and life moved on the way it does. Somewhere in those years, I learned that the Walmart DMM had tragically lost his daughter in a medical accident.

I was stunned at the news, and it gave me a fresh perspective on him. I had lost a business. He had lost his child. When I really sat with that, something in me shifted.  I started to see him as a father, a husband, a man carrying real grief, not just an executive who made the call that cost me everything.

There is an old fable about a pilgrim carrying a heavy wooden cross. After years struggling beneath its weight, he encounters Saint Peter and pleads for relief. Peter agrees, on one condition: he may set his cross down, but he must choose another. The pilgrim eagerly accepts. He places his cross on a large pile and begins examining the alternatives. Some look smaller, smoother, lighter. But as he lifts them one by one, he discovers every cross is heavy. Some carry burdens he can't see from a distance.

Eventually he finds a cross that feels familiar, that fits comfortably against his shoulder. Relieved, he turns to Peter. "This is the one I choose."

Peter smiles. "It is the same cross you arrived with."

I thought about that fable when I learned about his daughter. I had been so consumed by what I had lost that I had never stopped to consider what he might be carrying. I had made him the villain in my story, which meant I never needed to be curious about him.

Several years later, I walked into a fundraiser and saw him across the room. My stomach tightened. The old feelings were still there, but they didn't have the same force. Over time, something had softened. In their place was something quieter - maybe curiosity, maybe compassion. Whatever it was, I felt compelled to walk towards him and in a single motion I extended by hand.

We shook.

That handshake didn't fix everything, but it opened a door. It led to getting together for a coffee. That coffee turned into meals and meals turned into longer conversations. Over time, I discovered his values were actually much closer to mine than I ever would have imagined. Furthermore he had deep industry knowledge, a generous heart, and a genuine passion for helping kids.

His name is Don and a few years after that initial meeting, I invited Don to join the advisory board of my company.  The man I had once held responsible for breaking my business became someone I trusted to help build the next one. 

As I reflect, I now understand that forgiveness came first, and it happened in me long before there was any relationship to repair. Reconciliation and trust came later, and only because we both chose to keep walking through the door that first handshake had opened. 

To this day, Don and I have a friendship I am genuinely grateful for.

What I Want to Leave You With

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, much of it on Robben Island. By any measure, he had every reason to leave consumed by bitterness and hate; choosing to be a victim of his oppressors. Instead, he emerged and helped lead South Africa through one of the most remarkable acts of reconciliation in modern history.

Years later, reflecting on his release, Mandela is quoted as saying: "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

Most of us will never experience the kind of injustice Mandela endured, yet many of us know what it feels like to carry a wound. A betrayal. A disappointment. A decision made by someone else that altered the trajectory of our lives.

The challenge is that unresolved pain rarely stays contained to the original event. It shapes how we see people, how we interpret their motives, how we show up in our relationships, our leadership, and our view of the world. When we let it result in bitterness and unforgiveness, the person we believe we are punishing is often unaware of the sentence we have imposed, while we carry the weight of it every day.

That is why forgiveness is such a powerful act. Not because it changes the past or excuses what happened, but because it releases us from having to carry it into the future. Forgiveness is a gift, and the strange thing about this particular gift is that the person who benefits the most is the one who gives it.

So this week ask yourself:

Is there someone with a name and a face, not a circumstance, that you are still holding responsible for something that happened years ago?

Have you confused forgiveness with reconciliation or trust, and used that confusion as a reason to offer none of them?

What would it look like to give the gift of forgiveness, on your own, regardless of whether the other person ever earns reconciliation or trust?

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