Thursday, January 26, 2012

Apologies and Foregiveness


When someone offers you a sincere apology - do you forgive and forget? Do you forgive and move on? Do you forgive and continue to hold the grudge?

A bit of self disclosure here - I'm a scorpio, and like many scorpio's I can hold a grudge with the best of them. And as Bette Midler says in Beaches "My memory is long, its very, very long..."

I've been doing some work on myself - a lot over the past few years - and one of the things I'm working on is letting go. Its not as easy as it sounds. I'm an emotional hoarder. Every little betrayal, stab in the back., lie, hurt and abuse is stored in my brain and I can play them over and over again.

In an effort to be a better person though, as some of them come up, I've processed them - thought about how I felt, what put me in that position, what I could have done differently and then dragged them to the trash bin of my mind - in hopes of forgetting them and no longer trying mend a past I cannot change.

Sometimes its a successful effort - a few times, I have to process again. What has all of this brought up for me though? My ability to forgive, but not always forget. I'm trying to get better at the forgetting part - and clearly we aren't talking about serious issues here - like ruined my life or anything like that. Much smaller slights in the grand scheme of things. I've been working harder on the forgive and forget concept - there is a reason you (collectively) are in my life and why I want to keep you in my life - so if I haven't walked away over this incident - why am I holding a grudge or forgiving and moving on when I should be forgiving and forgetting?

I'm getting there - I wish others would too - the world - or at least my part of it, would be a much better place!

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