Forgiveness can be an act of choosing our freedom.
In the forward of Mandela: The Authorized Portrait, Bill Clinton told a story about Nelson Mandela being escorted to freedom outside the prison gates after 27 years of political imprisonment. Wrote Clinton,
As I watched him walking down that dusty road, I wondered what he was thinking about the last 27 years and whether he was angry all over again. Many years later, when we were both Presidents of our nations, I had a chance to ask him. I said, “I know you are a great man. You invited your jailers to your inauguration. You put your persecutors in the government. But tell me the truth. Weren’t you really angry all over again?” And he said, “Yes, I was angry. And I was a little afraid. After all, I’d not been free in so long. But,” he said, “when I felt the anger well up inside of me, I realized that if I hated them after I got outside that gate then they would still have me.” Then he smiled and said, “But I wanted to be free, and so I let it go.”
If I hated them after I got outside that gate then they would still have me.
That has to be one of the most powerful comments ever made about the act of forgiveness and the freedom it offers.