Allowing ourselves to be debased by an offense perhaps pays the offender more tribute than he deserves. To achieve authentic forgiveness, however, we must first “see to it that the injury done us does not harm us”¹ …by refusing to let ourselves feel debased in the first place. Only then can we forgive without feeling humiliated. But how can we remain unhurt, how can we forgive, when the harm results from, say, a medical error during childbirth that has painful and irreversible consequences? Perhaps then we must regard our misfortune as a mysterious part of the universal order which also gives us beauty and makes human freedom possible. Could we move toward the light, could we love it, if we were surrounded by nothing but light?

1-Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace)