In 1966 a movie came out called “Alfie.” It’s about a guy who thinks of no one but himself while he repeatedly seduces married and single women and leaves a trail of devastation for himself and others. He finally ends up alone and lonely.
Composer Burt Bacharach wrote the title song for the movie called “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The lyrics ask:
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
When we run into an Alfie in our lives and find ourselves on the receiving end of uncaring, or thoughtless behavior, Lesson 193 is right on point. It tells us to “Forgive, and you will see this differently.“
And it might seem that our efforts at forgiveness need to be aimed at our Alfie. For most of us, being the caring, loving, and spiritual people we are, our first thought is often “who am I not forgiving?“
But we can spend a lot of time trying to forgive other people, trying to see them as a child of God, and trying to find the goodness in them without ever addressing the real unforgiveness. The real question should not be “who am I not forgiving”, but “what am I not forgiving” because it was a thought or belief held in our own mind that triggered the upset brought by our Alfie.
The real unforgiveness is the thought or belief that we could be harmed in some way by their behavior or some circumstance of life that we’ve encountered. It is this thought, and always this thought, that needs forgiveness.
What’s it all about? It’s all about our identity. It is always about our identity.