 | BlueOctober (1)
07/24/2008 | I suppose it depends on the severity of the person's action that caused me to dislike them. If they had hurt a family member of mine, or a close friend...Than it may be more difficult to forgive their action. Yes, people do make mistakes! And I strongly believe in not only second chances, but many...As people change. An individual is not the same person they were in the past, however little the change may be. But...It's only natural for a person to feel dislike for another human being, if by chance they affect the life of another person to such a great extent that it alters their life forever, especially if in a negative way.
I think in order for a person to truly forgive every action that others have inflicted upon them and others throughout their life, they must have complete compassion for life and all of humanity. Which is not something that's easily learned!
(0 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | edt4 (99)
11/26/2006 |  A childhood friend and I had a very heated, acrimonious confrontation some years ago, and a life-long relationship came to an end. I did have regrets about the incident (in some ways, we'd grown up together...we attended the same grade school, his grandmother was like my grandmother, we'd traveled through Europe together, I had been at the hospital when his mother died, I had been in his wedding party, etc.) but any sadness I might have felt was overshadowed by my consuming, self-righteous anger. Without question, I felt I was the aggrieved party and I was fully prepared never to speak with him again. As time went by and the years passed, however, I was able to achieve a certain degree of detachment and perspective and began to recognize that I was hardly the unblemished innocent that I had heretofore thought of myself as. It was no easy task, but I braced myself, took a long, unpleasant (and sober) look in the mirror, and came to realize that I had been as petty, irascible, egocentric and unreliable as anybody else in my circle, maybe even more so in some instances. Objectively speaking, I still felt, and still do, that my friend was mainly responsible for what went wrong in our relationship, but I could no longer see myself in the same monochromatic manner as I had previously. With age, I may not have gained wisdom, but I was at least able to acknowledge (painfully) some degree of complexity within myself. And so, I sat down and wrote my erstwhile friend a letter. It was hardly a mea culpa; I didn't prostrate myself and beg forgiveness for my failings. But I did concede that the events that had precipitated our mutual melt-down had probably not been quite as simplistic or one-sided as I had initially supposed them to be. Basically, the gist of my letter was that we both shared in the blame, we both had acted with rash immaturity, and that hopefully we could look back at some point in time and remember what had been good and positive about the friendship, with affection and warmth instead of animus. I didn't necessarily expect a response; that wasn't my purpose in writing the letter. I think it was more for my benefit than it was for his. But I did get a response, a phone call, and we met for dinner. At first, things were uncertain, hesitant, and somewhat uncomfortable. There were still bruised feelings on both sides. Since then, several years on, we've managed to re-establish the friendship, at least to some extent. It's still not quite what it was, and maybe it never will be, but surely a friendship of even the most tentative sort is better than continuing hostility, hurt feelings, and recriminations.
(10 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
