Monday 14th November

You know that old adage, forgive and forget; so easy to say but much harder to accomplish.  If anything the forgiving is quite easy, at least on the surface – the hard part is the forgetting.  And because the forgetting is so hard, then whenever you remember, you remember the hurt too and that little bloom of anger will sometimes burst open and flower again, and so what was forgiveness all about if it can still hurt to remember.  And what is it about forgetting that we find it so hard to forget the slights, the rejections, the wrongs done to us, and sometimes find it harder to remember the good things, the times people were kind to us, or did us favors.  Are we really so mean spirited that we harbor these grudges for so many years, when the one who supposedly hurt us has in all probability completely forgotten that they ever upset us.  Maybe it is because there is some sort of unfinished business going on here; that riposte you only thought of saying days later, the words you should have said but were too shell-shocked or too scared of, in your turn, hurting them that you held back, bit your tongue, choked back that bitter reply.  But because you held it in it is still rattling round there somewhere inside your mind with no way out, except to resurface every now and then and remind you, especially when you thought you had forgiven and forgotten them long ago.

Sometimes these memories of hurt done to you and unresolved become so bad that people seek professional help.  I have never had any truck with psychiatry, or counseling as they call it nowadays – can you really imagine opening your heart up to a complete stranger in that way; letting them poke around in your memories, stirring up even deeper thoughts from your self-consciousness that really should remain buried.  I have found that working through it all, and yes, as I have done, writing it all down is the best way of dealing with these old wounds.

Someone, I cannot remember who, wrote that at a certain age we are all damaged goods, and yes I can look back and easily blame my absent father or my absent-minded mother, or my over-bearing Grandma for making me who I am – but maybe I should really be thanking them, rather than blaming them.  If I had had an ordinary (though what that is I can only imagine) childhood and hadn’t grown up an only child and so introspective, and reflective, then maybe I would not have been able to have written my book at all.  I mean, who wants to read about a boring and safe life lived with full confidence and making no mistakes at all. It is the flaws in people that we find so attractive not the perfection.

So Forgive, yes Forgive by all means, it is really quite easy to Forgive  – nothing really matters that much, it was only life after all.  But do not Forget, no, never let yourself Forget, but treasure that hurt, harbor it and use it to make something good come out of it.