I told someone recently "you should learn to cope, and to love and to care about everyone despite their cruelties and issues." This comment was in response to behavior born out of a grudge against someone who had treated him poorly. Standing on the outside of a situation, it's easy to call someone out on being petty or unfair or immature. In the situation yourself, the distinctions aren't always as clear. In the last couple days I have found myself put to the same test; how do I respond to someone who has hurt me? Do I hurt them? Or do I forgive?
Anger and sadness weigh heavily on a body, residing in the bones, making them feel dense, leaden, and fatigued. Like the silence of cemeteries, not broken but accentuated by an occasional punctuated sob, they permeate your skin, and hair, and lay thick on your tongue. They stop you from running, or walking too fast. They stop you from laughing or speaking too loud.
People are not homogeneous, whole things. We are made up of lots of little pieces. Not like puzzles, because those are rigidly defined, and people are not. We are each of us an individual atom with a cloud of electrons; personality traits, sometimes here, sometimes there. Each of us has a different group of traits, which is what makes us all individuals. Grudges can make us lose the things that make us who we are. They invade our personal lives, take away from us those things that were once meaningful. We learn to hate things because certain other people love them. We lose our tempers and snap at our loved ones. We lose ourselves. When that happens, when even a single electron is lost, we turn into a completely different element.
Change is natural. But I don't want the change in my life to come out of anger, and spite, and enmity. I don't want to find out someday that I am no longer who I was, and I don't like the person I have become. So I have learned to forgive. When I told my friend that he should learn to love and care about everyone, no matter how cruel and unkind they may be, I was talking about forgiveness. Looking through your pain and finding the human in the face of the monster who has hurt you. It is hard, but it gets easier the more you do it. A few days ago I had to make a decision that I realized really wasn't hard to make; I must forgive. If I cannot forgive a friend, I must live the rest of my life saddled with the anger and enmity and the unhappiness borne of losing a friend and of holding a grudge. If I do not forgive, I hold a poison inside my own stomach and wait as it slowly moves through my body. What good do we gain from holding on to hatred, and anger, and negative feelings? We shackle ourselves with them. Forgiveness sets us free.
I don't claim that forgiveness cures everything. It can still leave you aching, and sad, and tired. But the anger washes out. That's the first step towards healing. I haven't forgiven everyone in my life just yet, but I am working towards it. And I hope that someday my lungs will no longer be clenched with heavy cemetery air. I will find my lungs full of the fresh air of forgiveness, and I will be able to breathe, completely freely.
