There are many things in life that I have found that the more you do them, the easier they are to do because you see the benefits of the actions. In the case of forgiveness, I had no idea that it was such a powerful thing to do.
I have also found that when we forgive, it has very little to do with those people we are forgiving; it is about what we get out of doing the deed. If we are living our lives with anger and vengeance in our hearts, we are the ones who are carrying around that anger and vengeance; we live with it. What forgiving others does for us is that it frees us from carrying around all of that negativity. We get to move on with our lives, and, hopefully, those that we forgive also benefit from what we have done.
One of the things that's not often said about the act of forgiving is that the first person we need to forgive is ourselves. As we live our lives, we all do stupid, mean-spirited things. I've certainly done my share. When we forgive ourselves, it really does come down to recognizing that we know that we have done things about which we do not feel proud. More than that, true forgiveness comes with the intention on our part to be better human beings, to not do those things again.
In my experience, I have no reason to believe that it is possible for any of us to love and forgive others any more than we are willing to love and forgive ourselves. When we love and forgive, we are serving God's will and our own.
