It's All Good

[brightrosefox]

Adam and I had a somewhat impromptu conversation about forgiveness, letting go of grudges, being able to understand and empathize with those who have done us wrong or just been assholes.
(An old friend who was an extreme wangsty douchebaggy drama queen may be coming back into our lives soon. I have no desire to deal with his issues, especially because he's in his mid-thirties and really should have grown up; but if he's willing and able to be mature and responsible without dragging his personal crap into everything, I think it'll be just fine. One of my dearest friends is really mad at him because he unloaded all his angst and assholery on her, and it got me thinking: I don't want to hate him for being a dramatic asshole. I have no serious issues with the man other than when he starts whining about his problems (can't find a boyfriend, nobody in his pagan community wants to be his friend, etc). And he usually whines when only he's very drunk. I'd like to see him again, absolutely, and I know I can certainly get past the wangst and annoyance, because he's a great person.)
My husband has a very Zen-like attitude when it comes to forgiveness. He's able to forgive pretty much anything. No matter how evil. Seriously. It's quite commendable, the level of forgiveness this man can have. Granted, he might beat someone to a bloody corpsy pulp and then need to forgive himself for doing so, but generally, he's very laid-back and fluid when it comes to other people's idiocy and wrongdoing. Someone hurt him or his loved ones, but he can let it go, usually after maiming them physically or emotionally. I'd like to be able to follow his example. I'd like to be able to tell those who've wronged me, "Well, you've been horribly stupid and monstrous toward me, and I'd really like to hate you forever. Just because I'm forgiving you doesn't mean I absolve you. It means I'm going to walk away. After all, you're the one who has to live with yourself. But I'm not going to allow myself to be hurt anymore, I'm going to move on." Sometimes hatred twists us inside, hurting us too much for us to hold onto anymore, growing too huge for us to contain. Sometimes, it is easier to release it and move on from it.
This doesn't mean we can forget. It doesn't mean the evil or wrongness can be pardoned: "Oh, that's okay, it's water under the bridge." No. Not okay. No, forgiveness is accepting that what is done, is done. It is accepting the past and moving forward with life. Bad shit happened. People were hurt. It's time to keep going, put ourselves back together. We will always be angry. We will always be hurt. But forgiving is about being able to walk away. Anger can be a kind of strength. I'd rather be angry and forgive and slowly let go. I'd like to eventually get through the anger and leave it behind me.
Remember the Doctor Who episode, "Last Of The Time Lords," where the Doctor is owning the shit out of the Master, after all the horrible things the Master had done; and then the Doctor grabs the cowering Master, and holds him in a brilliant homoerotic moment, and says, "I forgive you, I forgive you!" over and over, and then cries when the Master dies without regenerating?
Yeah, that's how I want to see it.
Who am I to hate? I don't want to hate.

We're all just people. We do great things and terrible things, and we all have people who love us and people who hate us. We're good and evil and brilliant and idiotic and beautiful and ugly. We destroy life, we create life. We create belief systems and entire faiths and tear them apart when we don't like what they show us. We're probably the most contradictory entities in the known universe. We're the universe struggling to understand itself. Perhaps, we're all part of the same massive consciousness, perhaps we're all just parts of a whole, each a god unto himself or herself, ruling over individual universes, merging and blending with each other, learning as we go, infantile in our quests for wisdom and truth. I don't know. No one knows.
Sometimes I wish the Minbari religion was real. I'd probably convert.
The Minbari have a belief that the universe itself is sentient, and that the universe has the ability to break itself into many pieces and invests itself in every form of life. Thus, every being is a projection of a part of the universal soul. They believe that the universe uses the perspective of individual sentient beings in a process of self-examination and a search for meaning (similar to the real-life belief of pantheism).

Comments

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had a discussion along these lines a while back, posted some scans of one of my favorite comics back in the day on the topic of forgiveness (it's from the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, but I think it's still more or less universally applicable) -- I think what we need to take from it is that forgiveness is not absolution. Most of the time it has very little to do with the offender. It's about us, unburdening us from whatever weight their actions have laden us with.

I like the idea of the universal soul. I've been toying with the idea that we are, each of us, the same person, simultaneously. We're just born into a different set of given circumstances, a unique biology and heritage, and from our set of stimuli and experiences we grow into someone new each time. It's a bit of a reach, but I like to keep it in mind. Makes me a little more willing to cut people a little slack when they can't print a document because they haven't turned their printer on yet.

I think that scale and distance are the two great illusions of our age. We are not so far apart as we would like to believe. And life expands outward just as it shrinks inward -- we can acknowledge that we're made up of individual cells, each of them alive in their own right, and is it so different to consider that we're all essential aspects of a much larger life than our own?

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

You're right, forgiveness is not absolution. :)

You can say to somewhat you hate, "You know what, I'm going to move on. It does me no good to spew so much venom at you when I couldn't prevent what happened. I'm going to be angry at you, but I also have my life to look forward to. I don't want to hurt myself over what you did."

And it's not absolution, but it's something.

[greenteadragon.livejournal.com]

Totally off topic, but I thought you'd enjoy this

http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-commonly-confused-words-test

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

Here's my score. It's amazing how many people might get a lot of these questions wrong these days.


English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 80% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

The Minbari remind me a little bit of these two neuroscientists, um, Susan Pockett and [Someone] McFadden. They both hold to the theory that consciousness -- our soul, our sentience, our subjectivity -- exists in the brain's electromagnetic field. And one of them -- I think Pockett -- goes on to suggest that God is the universal EM field, which our consciousnesses are all part of.

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

I've heard of them. I'll have to read up on their theories. :)

[walksbeauty.livejournal.com]

hahahahahahaha I just LOVED your description of this "friend" of yours... A real Poor Me type, eh? yoiks!

Loved your points of view.. especially... "We're the universe struggling to understand itself. Perhaps, we're all part of the same massive consciousness, perhaps we're all just parts of a whole, each a god unto himself or herself"

Yup!

Ok, now I have to tune in hulu or alluc (no TV) to watch Babylon.. sounds good.

You tickle me pink, gurlfren'! hee hee

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

I feel like this friend is the pinnacle of the "Woe Is Poor Me" stereotype. He goes through boughts of what he claims is suicidal depression, but according to his past boyfriends, it's mostly cries for attention. I think he's getting better, though. He's older than most of my friends, and he really needs to grow up.

Bab 5 is AMAZING. You would LOVE IT.

[walksbeauty.livejournal.com]

I'll give it a try... picky about what TV shows I'll watch.. Will start with the pilot if I can find it!