'I forgive you'–these are the most difficult passages in life anyone will have to walk if they are faced with adversity that tears away at their inner core.
Everyone wants to think their story is in some way better than another’s. That somehow the misfortune that may have bestowed upon one family or person is somehow inconceivable to them.
I too was party to this thinking at one point in my life. Not in a self-righteous manner but in the way where we live our lives uninterrupted to the reality that one day the people in it and everything we adored was going to come crashing down either through betrayal, disaster or death. But when it does, and it more than often does, the things that we are forced to come to terms with like a natural disaster or death are sometimes easier to fathom than the loss of trust.
Whatever your situation and however deep the wounds may go, I implore you to close your eyes, if just for a moment and breathe ever so slowly. Listening to your breath as you release. Find in it that moment of stillness and affirmation that we are but of temporary existence and it too shall pass.
The agony, the ever-growing pain, the disappointment, it also shall pass. The journey to recovery begins with you, and though the pain will follow closely alongside you in this journey, I once again implore you to look around yourself. This time don’t just look but see.
See the glimmer of light, the blue of the atmosphere, the way it all feels still when you see it and not just pass it. There is life around you and within you.
Even in your greatest pain, even in your greatest moment of disbelief, what you must understand is this, compassion is not only for the other; it is for you. Allow yourself the compassion it needs to heal in order to forgive so that you too can once again see that life is not complete with one mistake. Life is not complete with the disappointment we feel whether self-inflicted or a result of another, life is not complete from failure.
Life only turns, repeats or show us the way we are meant to continue until our story is told.
Life’s not this grand design of conquering the greatest riches or tallest buildings of the world, it’s not about having the ideal spouse or children, job or shopping experience. Life is what we learn from it and how we use this knowledge to become at one with ourselves and through it, find the courage to forgive not for another but to move on for ourselves. Our true legacy is the contributions to the lives we touch while we are here.
So if you’re out there, and you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. If you think there’s no way out. If you feel cheated of your trust and time, remember, you and only you will ever have the power to say I will continue, I will see this story for what it is, but a temporary moment of my time. What I do with it is up to me, and no one else is responsible for its direction. No one else, but for me.
Thank you for reading!