Perception of Weakness

While those who know me best recognize my admiration and determination for a good argument (I've been told I should be going to law school way too many times), I do try to pick my battles.  Religious debate, for example, is something I can almost never turn down.  And although I'm sure that my boyfriend would add to this "nitpicking-cranky-sparring-matches-in-which-I'm-always-right-no-matter-what," let's just leave that out for the time being.  :)

Anyway, there are certain things I tend to avoid.  After all, there is a lot I do not know (imagine that; please don't tell my boyfriend I said that), so if a conversation or debate is headed into unfamiliar waters, I usually will not participate.  There is also a lot that gets way too intense, too quickly, particularly within modern era American politics (although I suppose the same could be said of religion, but hey, it excites me).  I generally find politics to be petty and superficial, almost like a façade for issues that should be more important than who is doing what or is on what side as though Washington, DC has its own E! show.

There are occasions, however, where I do find myself stepping in to stay a thing or two (imagine that).  This passion for certain issues dramatically increased after taking Dr. Rick Axtell's Religion and Violence course.  While digesting the (often interrelated) histories and current events of various troubled countries throughout the world, we simultaneously learned about how a "just war" should meet certain criteria (that it literally almost never meets) and peacemaking strategies that could easily be implemented (and by that I mean, WORK) if we were to pack up our ego.

When I saw that Obama was sending more troops into Afghanistan (followed up by the constant drone of "but we're going to withdraw!...sometime"), I was more than disappointed.  It was not because it gave me "another reason to hate Obama," I'm not that type of person, but more because it just seemed inherently wrong and crudely deceptive.  America (and the President) are only living up to their past traditions of biting the bullet because apologizing or simply stopping a failed operation might make us seem like the weak guys.  In reality, it just makes us look more like a group of schoolyard bullies, bumbling about the globe yelling "FREEDOM!" and making all our wars appear just without taking any real steps towards actual peacemaking (or justice for that matter).

Wow, rant.

Anyway, this is why I'm not a political writer and why I don't get involved in arguments.  I rant more than I give anything productive (even though I have the ability to do it) because I get far too heated just like everyone else.  That's where Bob Herbert comes into play.  Sheldon Tapley, my studio art professor, posted an opinion piece from the New York Times on his Facebook and it framed my thoughts concerning the issue at hand perfectly.

Check it out, I'd recommend it to anyone for at least perusing whether you agree with his sentiments or not.  It's quite well written, in my opinion.

A Tragic Mistake

The Odd Air of Forgiveness

When someone does something to you that isn't exactly fantastic, people often tell you not to hold a grudge and to forgive, but this becomes complicated when the thing being done tarnishes you psychologically and/or is done to you by those you have loved with your entire being.  In that moment (and for many moments thereafter for that matter) you feel like there's no way you could ever forgive that person, because all you can feel when you think about them or the situation is a tsunami's worth of negative emotions.

For me, there are several things in my life that cause this response.  I either repress the memory of the strife or look at the person that caused me anguish with absolute negativity.  I wish it weren't this way, I really do.  But it's one thing to tell yourself to get over something (or even to tell yourself that you have gotten over it) and another to actually do the deed.  While I'm sure there are gurus and priests and all sorts of spiritual or compassionate people who can do it by simply putting their minds to it, I and pretty much everyone else have just not reached that level (at least not yet).

So in that case, true forgiveness takes time.  Lots and lots and lots of time.  I suppose in that way, it's a lot like a grieving process.  There are surely stages to it, maybe patterned stages, although I'm not going to try and posit any, and in the end, the forgiver (hopefully) realizes that something truly bittersweet has happened to them.

The reason I write this is due to the same reason I write most of these entries: personal experience.

Recently, I was faced with a tough situation, one that dug up a lot of hard feelings from my past that I've not been able to get through up to this point.  It was random and private, and for once, I didn't quickly respond with all those same negative feelings.  For once, I responded with an intense longing for a magical bridge across the oceans-wide fissure that had been created from this horrible conflict.  I wrestled with it in the back of my mind for almost a week.  Some of those same negative feelings bubbled to the surface, but as they did, they quickly faded back into the longing for repair, for understanding, for forgiveness.  I spent more and more time recognizing the ways in which I had loved this person and how we were the same and not at all different.  Tonight, as I again privately revisited the situation that brought all of this up, I found myself arriving at a place of understanding.  It "fell into my lap" as swiftly and simply as though a letter had literally dropped out of the air and the answer to the perfect point of perception had been written there in a single sentence.  I was relieved.  And the person was forgiven.

This isn't to say that everyone involved has been given this same clearance; this past conflict that has caused me such deep-seated hurt over the years was extremely complicated to say the least.  But arguably the more important person (to me in particular) has been forgiven, and that is definitely something.


I wish you all the great fortune of being able to forgive those who have caused you suffering on all of your separate (and yet connected) journeys.