I have heard it said that “Forgiveness requires more than the intellectual commitment to do so.”
Years of seeking a definition that I can work with, I think I this is IT.
“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You’re done. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare…”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
“Forgiveness” never even showed up on my radar. It was and remains a non factor in my life and my decision to terminate the relationship with my biological Mugger. All together now, the Forgiveness Police among you, inhale in shocked displeasure at the obvious taint on your purity I’m about to bring to your attention
It’s no use appealing to common sense, reality or genuine human experience so here’s the Annotated Version that doesn’t make the meme rounds on social media: No beautiful vistas, no flowers, no “deep meaning” no attempt to pretend to proffer “timeless wisdom.”
I don’t live Life as a “Lifetime Movie.” I just live Life as It Is(tm).
I live in the boonies surrounded by deep forest and a river across the road. Try to wrap your mind around this, OK? Just try. People who think nature is benevolent are deluded. It’s around the clock homicide, kill or be killed, but unlike humans, the predator doesn’t torture the prey. And the prey gets to exercise it’s most fundamental right, the right to self-defense. Even a slime mold that has no brain or CNS “knows” to avoid a salt mound, an amoeba “knows” to stay away from pointy stuff. Only a tyrant would assert human beings don’t ALSO have this same right.
Would I “forgive” a bear for messing in my berry patch? A raccoon for destroying my ceramic containers while grubbing in my container plants? A doe for kicking the shit out of me if I unwittingly wandered too close to the wood line where she stashed her doe? That would be silly, right?
THAT IS WHO THEY ARE.
Please put down your “Forgiveness” torches and pitchforks. You’re fighting your own shadow, your own *fear* of public ridicule or rebuke. Common sense is hardly common any more and herd mentality has permeated and spread simplistic thinking like the odor of a skunk roadkill in a windstorm.
You drank the “Public Presentation of Moral Superiority” Kool Aid, fool. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth-even if it doesn’t kill you.