“However small or large, our immediate instinct is to run away from our transgression. Or to hide it. Or to lie about what we did so that nobody will find out about it. And in doing that, we’re in bondage to the thing that we’ve done. We let it dictate our next move, and the move after that. To do repentance is to be free of that. Paradoxically, it’s when we run toward our transgressions, rather than away from them, that we actually become free of them… And sure, it’s hard. Nobody wants to step forward to the person that they’ve harmed and say, “I was really callous and mean and shortsighted when I said or did the thing that I did before.” But when you do it, you find that there’s a liberation in it. It’s the joy that comes from feeling as though you’ve overcome the past instead of being enslaved to it.”
–Louis Newman, On Being interview with Krista Tippett
