By Mollie Engelhart at Brownstone dot org.

Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening (Plandemic 3), and several other films that became touchstones for millions of people trying to make sense of the Covid-19 era.

I expected the conversation to focus on public health, censorship, and the lingering questions many people still have about those years. It did. But what stayed with me most had very little to do with science, politics, or policy. It was a conversation about forgiveness.

Mikki spoke candidly about friendships lost during Covid-19, the pain of being misunderstood, and the reality that many of the apologies people hoped for never came. There were moments when emotion caught in his throat as he reflected on people he once loved and trusted. The hurt was still visible, but so was the peace that had come from refusing to carry that hurt forever.

One of the most powerful ideas he shared was that what gives a two-dimensional image depth is shadow. Without shadow there is no contrast, and without contrast there is no depth. The same is true of life. The difficult moments, the betrayals, the losses, and the disappointments create the depth that allows us to appreciate the full picture. But we cannot allow the shadows to become the whole picture. If we focus only on darkness, we lose sight of the beauty, growth, wisdom, and purpose that exist alongside it.

That idea hit me harder than I expected.

Partly because I have watched my own brother and Mikki experience a fracture in their friendship during Covid-19 that was eventually healed. Seeing two people find their way back to one another after time and distance had come between them is powerful. It is a reminder that relationships can survive even serious disagreements if both people remain willing to do the work.

But the conversation touched something even deeper in me.

During Covid-19, I watched businesses I had spent years building disappear. I watched equity vanish. I watched plans I had worked toward for decades collapse in a matter of months. Like many entrepreneurs, I wasn't just losing income. I was watching pieces of my life's work slip away.

I can forgive that. In fact, I believe I have to. Carrying anger forever is a prison. At some point, it weighs more on the person carrying it than on the person who caused it.

At the same time, forgiveness and accountability are not the same thing, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend they are.

I do not want to move on as if nothing happened. I do not want to pretend businesses were not destroyed, children were not harmed, families were not divided, and fundamental rights were not restricted. I do not want us to collectively decide that because enough time has passed, the questions no longer matter.

That is what forgiveness is not.

It is not forgetting. It is not pretending the wound never existed. It is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is the decision not to allow the wound to define the rest of your life. Accountability, on the other hand, is the willingness to honestly examine what happened so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

We need both. Without forgiveness, we remain trapped in bitterness. Without accountability, we guarantee that history repeats itself.

I am deeply grateful for what Mikki Willis brought to the world during Covid-19. His films gave many people the courage to ask questions when asking questions carried real social and professional consequences. Whether someone agreed with every conclusion he reached or not, he helped create space for conversations that powerful institutions often seemed unwilling to have.

What inspired me most last week, however, was not what he did during Covid-19. It was who he has become since. His willingness to forgive, his willingness to continue searching for truth without becoming consumed by anger, and hi...