Up until five years ago, I lived with the desire to flee my own life every time scenes of betrayal played on screen: they enraged me to the point where I wished the most ungodly of deaths on the malicious offenders; they made me jittery at the sight of naive victims wrestling to make sense of the inconceivable; but most of all, they pained me back to a time when a 24-year old married mother of one found herself unceremoniously turned out by the man she loved. To say that these types of gut-wrenching scenarios had a profound impact on me is the ultimate understatement: for a time, I seriously considered a foray into songwriting, using the bitterness plug as my only credential and aptly titling my would-be single “Judas Kiss” in a pre-Adele move that would have appealed to today’s Revenge circle. But alas, the downing of rage’s poisonous cocktail only further made me spiral down the Rabbit Hole, where its cousins (resentment, rejection and regret) waited on me to round out their Party of Five.  Uninterested in taking up residence in this house of doldrums, I decided on the most redemptive quality known to men to nurse me back to health: that of forgiveness.

Let me start by saying that forgiveness, in today’s world, is an oxymoron: tales of turning the other cheek are seldom easy to digest when flagrant evidences of this behavior make for perfect Reality TV scenes and cash money dreams. We rejoice in seeing others sneakily take down opponents by forming alliances, which are then disintegrated into a “Me, Myself and I” one-man tribe. We barely bat an eyelash upon learning of those who dissolve their marriages for having found “true love” with another, leaving behind them a trail of broken families and messy deals. We trade in long-time, loyal friends for the virtual ones who promise us exposure. We betray our values to gain an audience, even if their words and actions offend us to the core. But the most frightening thing of it all is that we go on to shake hands like good sportsmen for outwitting, outliving and outplaying each other, even though feathers have been ruffled and many are left gritting their teeth under their breath. The WON (Watch Out Now!) game is the new agenda, and if one is not on board, we commend them to take a class (stat!) of “DO YOU 101” before all is lost for them for all of eternity. Betrayal, it seems, is a quick ascent to the top if you are willing to bypass your conscience on the way to the crown…

However, even in the face of such dire straits, betrayal has a compelling upside: it reveals an offender’s true motives, releasing the victim from further harm and hurt and launching them into what I call “The Promised Land”. In that moment, the wronged individual becomes aware that: 1. their relationship with the other party was off balance, which wouldn’t have otherwise come to light had the offender not carried out their scheme; 2. the avalanche of feelings that stem from such a betrayal can, and will, become motivating factors to rise up from the ashes – after all, when one reaches the bottom of the barrel, there is nowhere else to go but up!; and 3. opportunities for growth are often born out of the worst of situations and always serve as compelling stories: if you are brave enough to live through it and are around to tell the tale, you lend yourself to the shiny example that hope springs and that it carries a torch whose fire can never be extinguished in the healing circle.

There are many people who choose to wallow in their state of self-pity assuming that living any other way is an “affront” to the trauma they have endured. I should know: that 24 year-old jilted wife went around the revolving anger door for four years following that fateful day, letting life slip right past her and claim her possibilities.

But here is the most important takeaway for those “Pity-Me Petes”: forgiveness comes with an expensive price tag called “karma” in the natural world, or “reaping what you sow” in the spiritual world. No matter which one of those two terms a person settles on to define the experience, the reality remains no less real and impactful on both the offender and the offended. It must be said, however, that wasting precious minutes of every day to see it materialize can best be summed up by this metaphor: “Bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”.  The secret is in forgiving yourself first and then untying the noose of oversight that kept you blinded from accepting bigger dreams. By the time a black hole finally unleashes karmic retribution on your enemy, you will be too busy enjoying your new life to care about someone who, frankly, propelled you into a better life.

You can thank them with a song…