Forgiveness

There were several ideas that went through my head today on what to blog. One was the "Generation of Laziness", another was "You Are Infringing on my Optimism", or "Why Do You Judge Me When You Don't Know the Story?". All these are things I thought about today and maybe some other time I will write them. Today though I am writing this due to a continueing problem I have had and one that almost everyone I know has dealt with at one time or another. This problem is "Forgiveness".

Forgiving people is something we all know we should do. Well if we are smart we know we should forgive people. The problem is that forgiving people when they hurt us really bad or make us feel vulnerable can be hard to do. Anyone who is smart knows that anger and bitterness can eat you from the inside out. It won't hurt the guilty party. Actually most people who hurt others do so for a reason. I am not talking about the accidental hurting of people. I am talking about the type of people who go out of their way to hurt people. You know the type I am sure. They are either miserable and thereforth feel everyone else should be or that get pleasure from controling people. These people don't care if your hurting. It actually makes them happy.

Most of the time I can forgive people easily. I am pretty good at letting things go most of the time. The ones I have a hard time letting go are those I trusted and loved that hurt me or hurt those I care about. Currently the people I am working on forgiving are an ex-boyfriend who owes me money, broke in my house, and stole stuff of both mine and my brother's. I can get past the owing me money, breaking into my house, and stealing my stuff. The hard thing for me to forgive is him stealing my brother's stuff. I am not saying that I didn't get angry or that I am not still angry about the stuff he did to me. What I am saying is that knowing that someone I trusted and believed I cared about could do such a thing not only to me, but to someone else I care about makes me so angry. The only other person I have a hard time forgiving I haven't ever met. That person beat my sister. Granted my anger for him isn't as strong since I haven't met him and I know how my sister couldn't anger people. It is the thought of someone doing that to my sister that angers me.

How do I learn to forgive these people? Well what I try to do is keep in mind that everyone has a story. That story creates the person. Granted we all make a choice on how we chose to let those stories form us and how we deal with them. Each person makes their choices for a reason. We can never know the whole reason they made the choices they did since we aren't in their mind. How people respond or react to things is different from person to person. Some of us have a harder time dealing with the bad things that happen to us. There are those of us that don't have any support or anyone to show us how to be a better person. The one thing people forget is that we aren't the same. We are all different. How we handle things, what we see, and the way things happen are all different. You may see a person who makes excuses or that doesn't try. What that person may see is how hard they tried and how many times things popped up to stop them from succeeding. The people who are angry and bitter see the things that made them that way. The parent who was to hard on them. The person who raped or molested them. They see the people who hurt them and tore them down. We don't know the person's story and a lot of times people think about how they were able to over come something, but forget not everyone knows how to. The next time something happens with someone remember there is always a story. Just as you have a story so do they. Try to feel compassion for them. I am not saying you should trust them again, but you can feel sorry for the person who was hurt. Remember we all have something that is hard for us to get past for whatever the reason. Whether it be jealousy, a material goal, a fear, or whatever it is we all have our obstacles. Just remember that other people have them to.