Forgiving and Forgetting…sometimes it just takes you by surprise

I am one who neither forgives nor forgets easily. I mull, I stew, I create fantastically elaborate scenarios in my head. What if this happened, what if that happened? What if I said this at the beginning, didn’t say anything at all? Perhaps I could prevent things that eventually become that annoying buzzing around and in and throughout my head, unwanted and even dreaded for the flare-ups of frustration and anger that they produce in me at the most random of moments.

This inability taints what it touches and especially has a significant effect on how I view people in my life. When someone acts in a way that tarnishes my opinion of them, it is difficult for me to see past the cloudy build up of my bewilderment and disgust and even judgment and realize that sometimes one incident does not sum up the worth of the whole person. Even while struggling through this, trying to force myself out of this hateful trap, I feel a twinge of disbelief, mistrust, or wariness when I am with those who had acted in such an unforgettable, unforgivable manner.

However, recently, I was utterly knocked over the head with the fact that somehow, at some unknown instant in time, I have completely gotten over certain misdeeds of the past. I have forgiven the perpetrators and have forgotten the old feelings that reflecting upon their actions used to arise in me. More than a nothingness, I feel almost an amusement now when I think about them. A curiosity. A desire to know what in the hell where they thinking or weren’t thinking. The judgment call. The cost-benefit analysis. A stratagem? What what what? I now see the hilarity where there was none before. How human it is. A delightful mystery. And this makes me happy. It makes me happy to have the ability to once again look upon these people without a shade over my eyes. To place value upon our relationships based on a larger spectrum of interactions. To not distress and have once again have a carefree-ness in our words and actions toward each other. A joke, a laugh of mirth, and it is over.

Who would have thought that forgiving and forgetting would be so easy.