What if I forgave myself? What if I forgave myself even though I’d done some things I shouldn’t have? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything different from what I’d done? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if all those things I shouldn’t have done were what got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have?

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.

It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.

We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.

"I realized that people might not forgive me but that God forgives, and if He can forgive me I can forgive myself and I will be okay".

You will forgive because you love yourself so much that you don’t want to keep hurting yourself for whatever happened. Whatever happened is done and cannot be changed. And we have to accept that and keep going with our life. — Don Miguel Ruiz

Can I be forgiven for all I've done to get here?
I want to be.
I can.
I believe it.

Forgive yourself.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them — to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.

I cannot forgive myself for what I did. It has long been one of my strictest principles not to interfere with the life of any individual, let alone attempt to shorten it. If an exception were to be made, Dr. Helvitius would surely qualify. It might be argued that, having neither scruples nor conscience, he had no claim upon the conscience of someone else — least of all, his intended victims. But that is a question to be resolved by a judgment higher than mine. In the event, my responsibility toward Vesper outweighed every other consideration.
I can state in all honesty: I meant only to wound him.
I cannot forgive myself — for missing the villain completely.

It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done.

If we can forgive what’s been done to us . . .
If we can forgive what we’ve done to others . . . If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.