Forgiveness
You know I love how lines from movies can be applied to life. I was thinking about a very specific line on the drive home tonight from trivia. It's from "The Karate Kid II". Mr. Miyagi has just embarrassed Sensei (using the term very loosely) Kreese and Daniel-san says "You could have killed him, couldn't you." Miyagi-sensei confirms that he could have. Then Daniel asks "Why didn't you then?"
And Miyagi-sensei says "Because, Daniel-san, for person with no forgiveness in heart, living even worse punishment than death."
He's right on the money. You have to have forgiveness in your heart, and the ability to forgive people or everytime you get into conflict with someone, it will eat away at you forever.
Now that being said, I was thinking about how I've reacted over the past two years to people who take the time to unfriend/block/whatever me on the various social media I use. My universal reaction seems childish at first. I block them in turn, but not to be childish. I simply don't want to be reminded that our relationship ended badly. Just as I don't want to socialize with people who no longer want to socalize with me (ex-wives spring to mind as an example), I don't want to be reminded of their existence or to know what's going on in their lives.
It isn't a childish, "I'll show you" kind of thing. It's just a coping mechanism. If you want to be out of my life, fine. I'm going to make sure you're all the way out. And, unless you knew me well enough to reach me via some method other than email or the internet, that is where it ends.
Now if someone with whom I'm at that point with wants to reach out to me, I'll listen. I may not choose to let them back into my life, and I may choose to offer total, partial, or no forgiveness but I have the ability and willingness to forgive most things, when someone offers sincere regrets. Or if they just ask to go back to the way things were. There are some for whom that is no longer an option. But that's a very short list.
Also, while I'm willing to forgive, I'm not willing to forget. Those are two different things. I forgave my father some really horrific things he did to me. I stopped letting them color or impact our relationship. But, I never forgot them. They were always in the back of my mind. He'd earned forgiveness. He'd earned the relationship we had from that point forward, which was a good one. But there was no reason to forget.
And Miyagi-sensei says "Because, Daniel-san, for person with no forgiveness in heart, living even worse punishment than death."
He's right on the money. You have to have forgiveness in your heart, and the ability to forgive people or everytime you get into conflict with someone, it will eat away at you forever.
Now that being said, I was thinking about how I've reacted over the past two years to people who take the time to unfriend/block/whatever me on the various social media I use. My universal reaction seems childish at first. I block them in turn, but not to be childish. I simply don't want to be reminded that our relationship ended badly. Just as I don't want to socialize with people who no longer want to socalize with me (ex-wives spring to mind as an example), I don't want to be reminded of their existence or to know what's going on in their lives.
It isn't a childish, "I'll show you" kind of thing. It's just a coping mechanism. If you want to be out of my life, fine. I'm going to make sure you're all the way out. And, unless you knew me well enough to reach me via some method other than email or the internet, that is where it ends.
Now if someone with whom I'm at that point with wants to reach out to me, I'll listen. I may not choose to let them back into my life, and I may choose to offer total, partial, or no forgiveness but I have the ability and willingness to forgive most things, when someone offers sincere regrets. Or if they just ask to go back to the way things were. There are some for whom that is no longer an option. But that's a very short list.
Also, while I'm willing to forgive, I'm not willing to forget. Those are two different things. I forgave my father some really horrific things he did to me. I stopped letting them color or impact our relationship. But, I never forgot them. They were always in the back of my mind. He'd earned forgiveness. He'd earned the relationship we had from that point forward, which was a good one. But there was no reason to forget.
posted by me at 10:40 PM
<< Home