Forgiveness

[cjsmith]

I'd be happier if I learned to forgive old hurts.

Sometimes I find it easier to forgive if I can put myself in the other person's shoes and understand a little - what pressures that person was under, what might have been meant but not said, what might have been said but not meant.

Sometimes I can forgive if I just don't give two hoots about the other person at all. It's incredibly freeing to hold someone in (let's be honest here) such low esteem that I don't care what they think of me. Sadly, or perhaps gladly, this one's rare for me.

Sometimes I can forgive if it's been long enough that I'm not the same person I was. I care less what was done to that CJ, or I now see how I set myself up for it.

Often times, an apology (particularly an indication that hurt wasn't intentional) is all I need. Then it's over, done, gone.

Those are the easy cases. They're so easy it's almost cheating. Real forgiveness... no, I don't think I'm quite so good at that.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Moving on, yes, not carrying the weight, yes. That's what I'm looking for. Maybe there's a next step after that, but I'll worry about next steps later.

I find it easy, these days, to stay open to the people who enhance my life and this world and walk away from those people who detract from it all.

Ideal! Me, I'm much better at the walking away than the staying open. Despite the fact that I talk a lot, sometimes about some fairly personal things, few people know me. Even with those I'll "turtle up" easily. This could be improved.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, the people I allow to know me, really *know* me, are small in number, and I'm exceedingly comfortable with that. There's open, and then there's *open*, y'know? :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I think I am like you in that the number of people who really know me are few. That's okay with me. Many people know me a bit, and probably think they know me very well, and that's fine with me too -- but folks like rfrench are rare and precious indeed. Now if I could just not turtle up away from *him* quite as often as I do. :-)