// Forgiveness//

is something that doesn’t come easily for me, or a lot of people for that matter.

But I learn to forgive, not because they deserve it, but because I do.

Anger and sadness envelopes you in this thick skin that you can’t remove and you don’t really know how it got there in the first place.  All you know is that it’s there, and it has become quite burdensome to keep it maintained.

So we forgive, to have a chance at rebuilding ourselves and finding who we really are.

People like to say that they forgive, but they don’t forget.

And in a lot of ways, that’s true for me.  And it is good.  If we forgot things, we would never learn from them or grow from them or pass on our knowledge to the less fortunate souls who are about to undertake the exact same, or similar, things we had.

But in some ways, it’s a little naive to claim people forgive and not forget.  It implies ease. With forgiveness, all is saved and we can magically move on with our lives.  And we don’t forget, so automatically, we can totally comprehend every mistake we have ever made.  And goodness knows, that since we don’t forget those things, we won’t ever make those mistakes again.

But, we know that isn’t true.  That would be ridiculous.  People don’t learn things that easily.

Forgiveness isn’t some all-saving path that suddenly releases the anger within.  It doesn’t completely turn you into a different person that knows exactly what you want out of life.

It’s much more difficult and beautiful than that.  Because when we try to forgive someone, we aren’t just forgiving the individual we think is at fault.  We’re also forgiving ourselves, for falling into such a dimly planned trap, so to speak.  We’re forgiving ourselves for not really looking out for our best interests.  And we are forgiving ourselves because we know, that despite whatever hard times have befallen us, we do deserve better.  We all do.