Living down mistakes

I saw one of the headlines on a leading Indian TV News Channel - it stated that a politician's new home address was a cell (room) number in a jail as she was sentenced to jail in a corruption case.  As a society, we take people who have done acts that impact our society adversely and depending on the severity of impact, the punishment varies.  A jail sentence is less of a punishment but more of time given to the offender to reflect, reform and then come back to mainstream society.

What I have noticed is that we are not great at forgiving someone who has committed a crime and gone to jail.  In India (and I am not sure as to what the situation is in other parts of the world), a jail bird finds it very difficult to get a job if he says he has served a jail sentence. We, somehow, do not believe that the person has reflected or reformed. We do not believe that the person has lived down his/her mistake.

My manager once told me that leaders who show that they are people with no vices, infallible and nothing can be wrong about them are generally leaders with whom no one can relate to.  He said that leaders are only humans.  Every human is flawed and we try our best to hide these flaws.  The more we hide, the farther away we go from our teams.  I have observed and tested this for few years now and find this to be very true.

Everyone of us has done something that we would not like to share with anyone else.  By carrying such secrets, we are serving out jail sentences beyond what we would have got from our society.  It impacts us in ways that we do not know and hence, we tend to live with these secrets.

I would like to share a story of the impact of carrying secrets in our heads.  A professor was talking to his student.  He asked him to imagine that he has a glass of wine in his hand and that he has to hold up the hand for a minute. Nothing would happen if it is for a minute.  He said that if it was for 15 minutes, then the hand starts paining.  And, if it is for few hours, the hand would definitely freeze over.  He then said that we carry our thoughts and secrets for years.  What should be happening to the brain? Frightening to even imagine.

Why do we struggle to forgive?  We tend to judge ourselves by our intent and others by their deeds and words.  So, while we would like others to let us live down our mistakes, we are not all that forgiving.  Someone, once told me, "To err is human and to forgive is raising to the level of God."  I believe that to err and to forgive is human.  If we honestly internalize that we are all flawed, we will automatically forgive too.