The first one: "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Ghandi
The second one: "Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time." Einstein. I use this one just to reinforce the first one because, if it wasn't enough that Ghandi encourages forgiveness, then having Einstein back the man should push that point home.
Words and sentences and how we put them together to communicate can tell you a lot about a person. Some people yell and some people hole up in silence. When we're angry, we can either discover great emotion and articulation to drive our compelling argument home. A scene that would make a lawyer cry from the beauty of it. Or, in most cases, we fumble with cotton in our mouths. Up grows further frustration and misunderstandings. It's only when things calm down that we (re)connect the pieces and make sense of things. Then we apologize. Then the train can go back to chuggin' until another tie catches and cripples it.
Some trains get into train wrecks. Furious-hot metal. Dangerous, outcropped pipes that reach out and try to give you tetanus. Anything to drag you down.
Thankfully, I've had my tetanus shot.
1 comment:
So much depth acquired in so little time, my darling Kaitlin ... How did this come about?
You were born, I think, craving answers to life's mysteries. Many people (most people?) go from cradle to grave concerned only with what eyes can see and ears can hear ... unaware (blissfully?) that the core of all humanity is hidden deep beneath the surface.
People like you, with bright inquiring minds, make it their life's work to peel away layers and expose truths.
Others feel no need to peel away layers and discover answers because they have no questions in the first place.
When I was your age, I knew nothing about the teachings of Mahatma Ghandi. My conscious need to understand human goodness and human cruelty - my conscious need to find answers - didn't begin until my mid thirties. Before that time, I was simply tiptoeing across the thin-ice of what I wanted my world to be, while life as it really was trembled and rolled just inches beneath my feet, causing me, always, to be a little off balance and out-of-sync with the rest of society.
I don't know, Kaitlin ... Maybe I'm still tiptoeing.
Forgiveness is number one on a long list of things I don't quite understand. What is it exactly?
In some cases it makes sense. For instance ... My mother was unforgivably cruel to me, yet I finally forgave her. Long years past the time when I should have forgiven her, for my own sake more than for hers, but the day did come when I forgave.
She never asked for forgiveness, you understand. She never admitted she did anything to require forgiveness in the first place. She never - in her own eyes - made a single mistake in her entire life. Still, after years of struggling, I told myself Mother couldn't help being the way she was. She simply wasn't emotionally able to nurture and rear children. Inside her beautiful woman's body, there lived a selfish child who would always remain a selfish child. She was a classic case of "arrested development." She lived her entire life as an unkind, self-centered, thirteen-year-old child in private, while playing the role of a sweet, kind, beautiful adult in public. She simply never grew up. Once I could view her in that way, I could forgive her. She wasn't responsible for the pain she inflicted because she was only a willful child living behind the loving facade of a mature adult.
In other cases, forgiveness makes no sense to me at all. My sister has done and said things that caused terrible pain and damage. If I said I forgave her I'd be lying. If I said I forgave her it might appear that I was saying I condoned the things she did ... that those things were okay. I could never condone the ugliness she created. The hurtful things she did were not okay at the time and they're still not okay today. Besides, if I forgave her (or at least said I did ... PRETENDED I did) she might come back into my life again. That would be a disaster. It would be exactly like inviting a rabid dog inside my home.
Some people are a grave danger to our peace-of-mind and well-being. My sister is one of those people. I haven't spoken to her in well over 20 years.
I don't understand Ghandi's view on forgiveness. I wish I did. I'll keep trying.
I'll always keep trying.
I love you, Kate.
Grandma Jo
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