mulberryshoots

When you get to be my age, you start to reflect on situations that were less than wonderful and then, burdened by our heavy-duty psychological culture (truly American, I think) we try very hard to either “work things out” or at least take a stab at “forgiveness” in order to be happy. After reading a bunch of stuff, I’ve come to a more reasonable approach that allows me to let go of that kind of baggage much more easily!

Which, is truly to “Let it Go!” like the “Frozen” movie–but here’s the catch: for me, I had to have some kind of intellectual hook or rationale for freeing myself from my self-induced beliefs about forgiveness duty. Guess what I discovered?

That resistance to forgiveness might be a resistance to feeling love for yourself within. And if you examine this little thought, why bother to jerk yourself around to forgive someone if you don’t care or feel love for that person in the first place? If someone did you in and they’re not part of your life anymore (like professional back-stabbing or thoughtless family members who will never change) who cares anymore? Just let ’em all go!

Right? If you love someone, they’re worth figuring out how to get along with better even if it means you have to be patient and it might take a long time. If you don’t care inside about them as being valuable to you, then stop chinning yourself onto some kind of high bar of personal resolution that doesn’t really matter in the end

So, if you’re still reading this little post, my “divide and conquer” perspective is to divide off those who really don’t matter to you in the end, and concentrate solely on improving those relationships that do. If forgiveness is part of it, so be it even if you can’t figure it out right away. (Sigh of relief.) Much more satisfying to build upon love than anything else, don’t you agree? Sounds simpler, at least for me.