Why I Stopped Trying to Forgive: Letting Go of Blame in a Deterministic World

For most of my life, I struggled with the concept of forgiveness.

It didn’t matter how many books I read or how many times I heard the phrase “forgive for your own peace”—something about it never landed. It felt forced. Intellectual. Slightly performative. It felt like I was being asked to do something that didn’t make emotional or existential sense.

Now, after years of reflection—and a deepening belief in the idea that we don’t actually have free will—I finally understand why.

It’s because forgiveness is only necessary in a world that believes in blame.

Forgiveness Assumes Guilt

Most definitions of forgiveness go something like this:
Someone wronged you. They could have acted differently. You’re justified in your anger. But you rise above it. You forgive.

It’s noble. Virtuous. Spiritually mature.

But let’s be honest—it's also exhausting.

Because if you’re trying to forgive someone who harmed you deeply, or who keeps harming you, or who never even acknowledged what they did… you quickly learn that forgiveness (in this form) is often just another emotional performance.

It asks you to:

• Feel something you're not ready to feel.

• Release something you may still be holding for good reason.

• Take a morally superior stance you're not sure you even believe in.

And underneath it all is this idea:

They could have done better. But they didn’t. So now it’s on me to transcend that.

Enter Determinism: What If They Couldn't Have?

Here’s the shift that changed everything for me:

What if that person didn’t choose to hurt you—not really?

What if their actions were the result of:

• Their conditioning,

• Their trauma,

• Their neurobiology,

• Their environment,

• Their inherited patterns,

• Their inability to regulate, reflect, or grow?

What if their behavior wasn’t a reflection of who you are or what you deserved—but a reflection of who they were shaped to be at that time?

In that light, blame dissolves.
And once blame dissolves, forgiveness becomes irrelevant.

What Emerges Instead

I don’t forgive anymore.

That’s not to say I condone harm. It’s not to say I don’t walk away, set boundaries, or name what happened.

But I no longer carry the burden of trying to emotionally pardon someone.

I don’t need to.

Because from where I now stand, I see:

• Their behavior was caused.

• My reaction was caused.

• We’re all shaped more than we shape ourselves.

And from that lens, compassion sometimes arises—not because I work at it, but because I understand more.

And when it doesn’t?
Distance is enough. Clarity is enough. Truth is enough.

You Don’t Need to “Forgive to Heal”

This is a myth I wish we would retire.

You don’t need to forgive in order to heal.
You need to see clearly.
You need to feel safe.
You need to tell the truth about what happened.
You need to let the emotional knots unravel naturally—without forcing resolution.

And often, when you stop trying so hard to forgive, you finally create the space for something real to emerge:
Compassion. Or grief. Or understanding. Or simply the peace of no longer holding onto something that was never yours to fix.

Final Thought

Forgiveness, in many ways, is a concept born inside a world of free will, moral failure, and blame.

But if you begin to see the world through the lens of determinism—where people are acting from their conditioning, not their conscious choice—then forgiveness isn’t needed.

Because there’s nothing to forgive.

There’s only the slow, unfolding work of understanding why things happen the way they do—and choosing your next step from that place of clarity.

Sometimes that step is compassion.
Sometimes it's distance.
But either way, it doesn't require moral superiority.

It only requires truth.

Joanne