A blog by Joyce Cordus
As I write this blog, it has been all but two weeks since my Achilles tendon tore off. As a result, I am now lying with my cast leg up until the end of October and, when walking on one leg, have to use crutches. Being more or less housebound for eight weeks and depending on other people for almost everything is, I think, a disaster for most people. So too for me. I felt defeated, angry and sad. When, to console myself, I posted about this on social media (because then I generate attention to my “pathetic” situation), colleague Frits wished me a good recovery but also, “may you practise forgiveness toward your Achilles tendon. I smiled: forgiving my Achilles tendon? And right then, I remembered again how I addressed myself when it had just happened and I was lying on the ground waiting for help, “How did I suddenly have a weak Achilles tendon? I hadn’t even been on the tennis court for ten minutes!” I felt anger and fear: “Why is this happening to me? Suppose it no longer heals?” Also denial: “No, it can’t be my Achilles tendon because that doesn’t happen to me! It must be something else!” But I also felt guilt: “What did I do wrong for this to happen to me?”
Frits’ kind wish made me realize that I had indeed immediately reacted on autopilot and was engaged in negative self-talk and blaming myself: “I wasn’t properly prepared and/or missed signals, so own fault, fat lot!” Purely negative and destructive thoughts, then, and they didn’t make things better. I felt how this cocktail of disappointment, anger, guilt and sadness only made me more somber and sad. What would happen if I spoke more lovingly to myself, as I would to a close friend who had had the same thing happen to him or her? Again, I had to smile. Just thinking about that made the anger, fear and sadness lessen and finally disappear.
In that moment, I knew that I had managed to forgive my Achilles tendon as well as myself and surrender to the situation, no matter how lousy, and room for gratitude arose. Gratitude for the fact that there are dear people around me who lovingly care for me, for the fact that I am otherwise reasonably healthy and that medicine has advanced to the point where, without undergoing risky surgery, I can heal. Grateful for all the compassion. I was also reminded of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s saying, “pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. My Achilles tendon and thus forgiving myself made me stop suffering.
Besides, how often does it happen that we blame ourselves for something that happens in our lives? Especially when something goes wrong or turns out differently than we imagined. And most of us have probably also learned that you are responsible for your own life because, after all, life is malleable. So if things don’t go your way, it’s up to you: own fault, fat lot! Compassion, compassion and kindness toward yourself, is not only the medicine for guilt. It is also the first step in self-forgiveness. Because yes, you can also forgive yourself, your illness or Achilles’ heel. Forgiveness does not have to relate only to the other person. But it always starts with compassion. Compassion for who you are, in this moment, no matter what, and accepting that things happen in life that are beyond our control and that these things are allowed to happen.
Among other things, that’s what you’ll learn in the Mindfulness-Based Training in Forgiveness” that Frits and I have developed: learning to be more compassionate about how things are going. It is a first step on the road to forgiveness, of others, but also of ourselves, and even of our Achilles’ heel.
Afterword:
In an article in Dutch newspaper Trouw, I read, surely not by accident, the following: “Already with Homer we find a passage, in Book IX of the Iliad, that tells of the envoy to Achilles’ tent, in which the forgiveness of the gods is presented as an example to man. In that passage, Phoenix, the ancient and wise charioteer, makes a final attempt to persuade Achilles to accept Agamemnon’s offer of reconciliation. Phoenix says – and I quote from M.A. Schwartz’s unsurpassed translation: “But Achilles, restrain thy pride. Not should your heart be ruthless. Even the gods allow themselves to be pacified, who surpass you in virtue, in honor, in strength. They too reconcile men with sacrifices and pious prayers, with libations and roasts, begging forgiveness for misdemeanor and crime.’”
How miraculous is it that just as I am intensely engaged in forgiveness, I tear my Achilles tendon?
– Joyce Cordus, September 2023
