Council member says forgive

On Dec. 6, the Westlake Village City Council gathered for its annual rite of passing the torch of mayor. As Westlake’s former mayor pro tem I recognize that being mayor of our wonderful city is a privilege not a right. As events have unfolded over the past 30 days, I knew in my heart that this privilege would not be mine. Such disappointments are the ways of this journey we call life.

In the process of working through this disappointment, I looked in the mirror and discovered the appearance of an uninvited shadow that is endemic to all people.

Jung writes of what he calls “the shadow,” the negative sides of our personalities, those aspects of ourselves that we don’t like and would rather pretend are not really there. The more we try to put them behind us and keep them out of sight, the more they follow us around like our shadows.

Borrowing from C.S. Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters,” “Hell is a state of mind, not a place, where everybody is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and the way he is perceived, where everyone has a grievance and where everybody lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self importance and resentment.”

The Jewish philosopher Hannah Arndt said, “The only remedy for the inevitability of history that can lead us to a hell-like state is forgiveness, otherwise we remain trapped in the predicament of irreversibility. When we forgive, we set the prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner was us.”

I, for one, choose to lose “the shadow from hell” and move forward, setting my will in the direction of forgiveness. I am confident that in time, my emotions will follow. Care to join me? Jim Bruno Westlake Village City Council