Forgiveness

In all my years as a human being, including childhood, I've been blessed with the ability to understand both sides of  most stories.  I honestly think that is due to the fact that I lived in Japan just 12 years after the end of WWII, when I was on foreign territory, yet had only total respect for the Japanese people.  They had a story; we had a story.  Had I known it all, beyond a child's ability to understand, I might not have been so understanding.  Thank God, I was an innocent child seeing a country as it really was, not the way politics would have had me think. 

When I became a teacher many years later, I heard stories that would make hair curl.  I came to understand that I could only believe half of what I heard--then realized that parents were also hearing horror stories about things that happened at school, only half of which were accurate. 

If all of the things that happen in life, unintentionally, are to be forgiven, people first need to understand the circumstances.  If a child hurts your feelings by something he/she says, you forgive the child because the kid doesn't know any better.  It is MUCH harder to forgive so-called normal people because they should know better. 

I have had two events in my life that have caused immeasurable harm to me.  One, I forgave because I was asked to.  (Always easier to forgive someone who asks for it, isn't it?)  The other, I forgave without even realizing it because I understood that this person is not capable of normal relationships. It's like absolving a retarded child from misbehavior because it is part of his/her disability.  In short, I understand that forgiving the hurts we live with is all about US not THEM.  Forgiving isn't saying that what they did to us is okay; it's saying "I am ready to give up my anger because hanging onto it takes away my freedom". 

 On a side note, I hope I am forgiven as much as I forgive.  I don't even pretend to be perfect!  Not even a little....