Today, my friend asked me about forgiveness, and how you could tell when you were practicing forgiveness, and when you were just letting someone walk all over you. I told her the best I could define it, in my own prosaic way, is how it feels to me:
To me, forgiveness feels like walking out the back door of a house, towards a well on a hill. When you get there, you lower the bucket and you pull back up the sweetest, clearest, coolest water you could possibly hope for at such a thirsty moment. Then, when you drink it (or dump it all over you, depending on the circumstances) it washes all the dust and grime and heartache of the journey off of you. It's like a tiny baptism and you emerge reinvigorated and refreshed. This doesn't mean you plan on taking the journey again; you just wash away the worst parts of it, and then you carry on.
I once did not believe in forgiveness, and it was something I spent time meditating on and trying to put into practice, thinking it was something I could force. It's not. It's something that happens inside you, something that transmutes grief into a soft loss, and sorrow into a more wearable form of itself, and pain into an outpouring of love. Forgiveness is not about making the same errors in judgment when it comes to another human being, it's about not carrying the bitterness, anger, or regret that manifested from your interaction(s) with that person on the next leg of your journey. Forgiveness is not about forgetting, it's about releasing yourself from the demands of blame, and thus releasing the other person, as well.
At least, that's what forgiveness has become for me. My capacity for forgiveness has become formidable, almost terrifying, and yet also reassuring. There is little I carry with me now. After every anger, every heartbreak, every moment of pain that seems (for the moment) unendurable or unable to be overcome - after every one of these, or all of these, I sift through and find something beautiful. Sometimes that beautiful thing simply is the truth of how much I love someone; sometimes that beautiful thing is the knowledge that the moment is over and will never happen again. I forgive myself for feeling (too much?) and I forgive the person for not being the person I wanted them to be, which is what it comes down to most of the time. Then I hold onto that beautiful thing, and I release the rest, like soil to a stream, or birds to the sky.
I sing my daughter the song "Favorite Things", sometimes as a lullaby, sometimes as a way to help her assuage her young sorrows. Sometimes I sing it to myself. Song, my friends, is a great instrument of healing.
Some of my favorite things are: my husband's smile, my daughters' laughter, a really good paragraph in a book or line of poetry or a moment of film or the perfectly framed photograph of a casual moment, a beautiful day, certain songs that carry a memory of happiness with them regardless of where I am currently.
What are some of your favorite things?
To me, forgiveness feels like walking out the back door of a house, towards a well on a hill. When you get there, you lower the bucket and you pull back up the sweetest, clearest, coolest water you could possibly hope for at such a thirsty moment. Then, when you drink it (or dump it all over you, depending on the circumstances) it washes all the dust and grime and heartache of the journey off of you. It's like a tiny baptism and you emerge reinvigorated and refreshed. This doesn't mean you plan on taking the journey again; you just wash away the worst parts of it, and then you carry on.
I once did not believe in forgiveness, and it was something I spent time meditating on and trying to put into practice, thinking it was something I could force. It's not. It's something that happens inside you, something that transmutes grief into a soft loss, and sorrow into a more wearable form of itself, and pain into an outpouring of love. Forgiveness is not about making the same errors in judgment when it comes to another human being, it's about not carrying the bitterness, anger, or regret that manifested from your interaction(s) with that person on the next leg of your journey. Forgiveness is not about forgetting, it's about releasing yourself from the demands of blame, and thus releasing the other person, as well.
At least, that's what forgiveness has become for me. My capacity for forgiveness has become formidable, almost terrifying, and yet also reassuring. There is little I carry with me now. After every anger, every heartbreak, every moment of pain that seems (for the moment) unendurable or unable to be overcome - after every one of these, or all of these, I sift through and find something beautiful. Sometimes that beautiful thing simply is the truth of how much I love someone; sometimes that beautiful thing is the knowledge that the moment is over and will never happen again. I forgive myself for feeling (too much?) and I forgive the person for not being the person I wanted them to be, which is what it comes down to most of the time. Then I hold onto that beautiful thing, and I release the rest, like soil to a stream, or birds to the sky.
I sing my daughter the song "Favorite Things", sometimes as a lullaby, sometimes as a way to help her assuage her young sorrows. Sometimes I sing it to myself. Song, my friends, is a great instrument of healing.
Some of my favorite things are: my husband's smile, my daughters' laughter, a really good paragraph in a book or line of poetry or a moment of film or the perfectly framed photograph of a casual moment, a beautiful day, certain songs that carry a memory of happiness with them regardless of where I am currently.
What are some of your favorite things?
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