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Forgiveness
This motivational thingala passed across my Internet stream today, and seemed very timely/relevant.
One of the lessons I've learned from my family is that people are capable of inflicting lots of unintentional hurt. Their inability to register the damage doesn't in itself make them bad. You're just not the thing they're focused on. And so they scatter shrapnel across you and it literally has nothing to do with you.
This? This, I grok.
It's why I don't talk to most of my family. Too much unintentional damage.
(In a healthy family, of course, we would have talked it out and figured out a different path..For my well being, with the family I was dealt, walking away was the road better traveled.)
So. You control what you can. You control your Self.
You can't make someone read your heartfelt apology, or hear your accusation. What you can do is get that thought, that sorrow, that regret, that anger out of your head and out of your throat. You can't make anyone listen..but that doesn't mean you have to hold those things to fester inside you.
And, going back to that image...sometimes people hurt you and have no earthly idea they've done it. You carry that around until, like a splinter, your body works it out of your system.
You find that you've worked the bad out of your system. Or you find that being angry isn't as important as being happy. Or you realize why that word, that action, hurt you, and that it had nothing to do with what you thought after all.
You find that you caught the reflection if that action/word/thought/deed, you owned it, you sculpted it into something and you internalized it, you made it yours in a way no one else could ever have forced you to do.
You realize the ear that needs to hear forgiveness is the only one you can control. Yours.
And so you say 'I forgive you,' and if you're lucky, the other party hears you. And if you're luckier still, you say it, and you believe it, and the badness you're carrying around finally has permission to go away..
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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In my opinion, forgiveness really does need the participation of the other party. In Christianity. even GOD cannot/does not forgive unless there is sincere repentance and recognition of wrongdoing. Being more merciful than God might even be a heresy!
But- I don't think that forgiveness is the only way to put crap behind you. Sometimes it just works to say that this was crap, and now its over, and it's not a part of my life any more. That
's not forgiving the people who put me through crap; it's just saying they are no longer relevant... and there is NO WAY I would allow them to become relevant again, certainly without sincere explicit repentance (which might allow me to forgive them).
The idea that one either has to forgive OR be tied up forever is false.
Sorry if this is tangental to what you're saying; it's one of my triggers. *hugs* Obviously, people will do what works best for them- forgiveness, moving on, and/or outrage.
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