There was a time recently when I swam through the waters of Maui, Hawaii. There is something special about that place.
The land is grounding and the waters are healing.
Modern minds might try to explain it. Science might eventually give us language for some of it. Others might simply call it supernatural. But I wonder if the ancients knew something we’ve forgotten.
Something about the land.
Something about the water.
Something about grief, forgiveness, and what happens when we finally become willing to release what we were never meant to carry forever.
Perhaps the ancients knew far more than we can explain.
Making Things Right
I had been thinking about forgiveness before I ever stepped into those waters.
Not the greeting-card version of forgiveness. Not the version where everybody hugs at the end, agrees that we’ve all learned something, and does a happy skip into the sunset.
Actual forgiveness.
The kind that asks: “How do I no longer give charge to this situation?”
As a former devout Catholic the first thing that came to mind was reconciliation. “How many Hail Mary’s do I need to recite until I feel complete with this thing?”
Does it mean someone gains access to me again? Does it mean forgetting what happened? Does it mean pretending someone wasn’t wrong?
The Hawaiian practice of hoʻoponopono offers a much richer idea than the four-line mantra many of us have encountered through modern spirituality.
At its roots, hoʻoponopono is concerned with restoring harmony through truth, responsibility, reconciliation, repentance and forgiveness.
Because making something right is not necessarily the same as putting something back the way it was.
Sometimes making things right does means reconciliation.
Sometimes it means an apology. Sometimes it means accountability. Sometimes it means changing your behavior.
Sometimes it means sending someone love from a distance who will never apologize…EVER!
And sometimes making things right means walking away without needing to make the other person wrong.
That one took me a while.
I learned over the years that forgiveness isn’t only about what someone else did to us. There are things we’ve done, too.
Perhaps the people we didn’t mean to hurt. The conversations we’ve avoided. The times where pride won or when fear made decisions for us. The relationships where, whether we like admitting it or not, we contributed to the fracture.
There is tremendous freedom in being able to say: That part was mine.
Not as self-punishment or groveling.
Not as an invitation for someone to walk all over you. Just truth. Which feels like this:
“I acknowledge what happened. I acknowledge what it cost me and perhaps what it cost you. I take responsibility for what belongs to me and I release what belongs to you. I also refuse to keep carrying all of it forward.”
Complete neutrality.
An Ancient Human Question
The Hawaiians were hardly the only ancient people wrestling with this.
Across cultures and centuries, human beings have been asking some version of the same question: How do we live after we’ve been hurt?
Hindu traditions speak of kshama—forgiveness, patience and forbearance.
Buddhist teachings have spent centuries examining suffering, attachment, compassion and the consequences of continuing to grip resentment.
Different traditions, languages and understandings of the divine and of human suffering. Each one uniquely different, though, I am fascinated that civilizations separated by oceans, geography and centuries kept returning to this human need to loosen our grip:
To restore, forgive and release.
We like to think we’re discovering these new things:
Therapy has language for them.
Coaching has frameworks for them.
Psychology studies them.
Instagram definitely turns them into inspirational quotes.
Meanwhile, humans have been sitting beside fires, entering temples, gathering families, praying, meditating, confessing, forgiving and walking into bodies of water trying to figure out what the hell to do with being human for thousands of years.
And then, Dolly Parton died.
I Will Always Love You
Dolly Parton died on Tuesday, August 25th, 2026.
Like millions of other people, I grieved a woman I had never actually met.
People immediately began writing about her. Sharing songs. Telling stories. Remembering her humor, generosity, faith, business savvy and her extraordinary ability to somehow belong to everyone without ever becoming anyone other than herself.
And I found myself thinking about her while I was already thinking about forgiveness.
Which admittedly seems like an unexpected place to take an essay about ancient wisdom.
Stay with me…because there is a thread here.
Among the thousands of songs Dolly wrote during her lifetime was I Will Always Love You. Most of us know it as one of the great love songs.
However, Dolly, originally wrote it while she was leaving.
She had decided it was time to end her professional partnership with Porter Wagoner, the man who had played an enormous role in helping launch her career.
He didn’t want her to go. She went anyway.
But she didn’t need to destroy everything that had been good in order to honor what she knew was next.
Sit with that for a moment…
One of the most enduring declarations of love in modern music is also a declaration of departure.
I can love you. And I can leave.
There is something remarkably mature about that.
What Dolly was saying in essence, was:
This mattered to me. You mattered to me. What we had was real. I am grateful. And, it is still time for me to go.
Sometimes forgiveness allows us to leave without needing to destroy everything that came before us.
Love and departure aren’t always opposites.
Two people can love each other and respectfully know they are not right for each other long term.
A successful business partnership can run it’s course and understand when it’s time to move on.
A long time friend can still be a good friend and you no longer give them the same access to your life.
You can understand why someone behaved the way they did without volunteering to experience it again.
You can be grateful for what was and still choose what comes next.
And perhaps most importantly: You can forgive without rewriting history.
Grace Without Erasure
There is something else about Dolly Parton that keeps coming back to me.
She was so unapologetic.
Behind that Big Hair, Big Boobs and Big Rhinestones was a woman of faith, music, books, humor, generosity, and philanthropy.
Dolly never seemed particularly interested in shrinking herself to make herself easier for other people to understand. And somehow, she brought people together anyway.
People who couldn’t name five country songs still loved Dolly.
She managed to remain unmistakably herself while extending enormous grace outward.
That feels increasingly rare. We’ve somehow confused being unapologetic with being combative. As if becoming fully ourselves requires rejecting everyone who doesn’t understand us.
Dolly seemed to embody something different.
Grace doesn’t require self-erasure.
You don’t have to become smaller to be kind and you don’t have to abandon yourself to love someone.
You don’t have to make everyone who came before you wrong in order to become who you’re becoming.
Maybe that’s another kind of wisdom.
What We Carry Back to Shore
We can all go snorkeling and see some cool coral reefs under water. The deeper question:
What have human beings carried into oceans, rivers, temples, churches and sacred spaces long before any of us arrived here?
Perhaps forgiveness isn’t forgetting and it’s also not a reconciliation.
Maybe it is not pretending something didn’t hurt, excusing what shouldn’t be excused, or reopening a door you’ve finally had the courage to close. (And, please do not open that side window because you know sure as hell they will try to crawl back through the front door).
Maybe forgiveness is much quieter than that.
Maybe it’s the moment we decide: I am no longer willing to carry this with me.
I can honor what happened without allowing it to determine what happens next. I can take responsibility for what was mine. I can release what wasn’t. I can apologize where an apology is owed. I can forgive where forgiveness is needed. I can grieve what has ended. I can love what was and I can still choose differently moving forward.
Maybe that’s what the ancient teachers already knew.
Making things right doesn’t always mean putting things back together.
Sometimes it means putting them down.
The ocean didn’t erase anything.
It simply reminded me that I didn’t have to carry everything back to shore.
