Accepting and Forgiving... YOURSELF

More pages, more letters and more ideas. One of the main ideas I faced this past week during the reading of Les Mis is acceptance. However, this acceptance is not talking only and mostly about being understanding and tolerant of others, but being able to accept yourself. Being able to accept who you are. This type of acceptance is even more vital in our everyday lives than the acceptance of others, because if you cannot love yourself and forgive yourself, then there is no chance that you will be able to do this for others. This is not the only reason we should accept ourselves. If you cannot accept yourself, you cannot live your life on Earth in peace and do not have a chance to find joy and completion. You also might very well, rob those around you of happiness.

The two examples that prove this statement both come from the books sophomores read this year, Things Fall Apart and Les Misérables. The first example, from the first book, is Okonkwo, a person of power and influence in one of the tribes in Nigeria. His father was poor, lazy and never repaid his debts. Okonkwo, although a grown up man, was not be able to accept his father and was not able to accept that he is father’s son. Throughout the book we see him trying to run away from his heritage and trying to escape from the man he knows himself to be. I am not going to spoil the book for you, so I will just say that Okonkwo, his family and his tribe suffer horribly, because Okonkwo cannot accept himself. On the other hand we have Jean Valjean from Les Misérables. He knows himself to be a convict and a thief. He remembers that he robbed the one man that showed him compassion and a small boy that had to earn his living. He struggles with himself and his criminal past. However, eventually, he is able to accept and forgive himself, as well as gain wisdom from the hard circumstances he goes through. Because of the forgiveness that lives in him, he goes on with life. He applies the things he learned in his hardships and through this brings prosperity to a whole region of France, as well as makes life better for all those around him. He brings salvation to those in need of material things and to those in need of a second chance.

This demonstrates how important it is to accept and forgive ourselves. Every one of us should be ready for the missteps that we will, with no doubt, make, but we also must be ready to forgive ourselves for them. No one is perfect, but our mistakes provide a step for us to rise higher, become better and wiser. If we are ready to accept ourselves for who we really are others will be too.