Do you know what, I've never been sure what the hell forgiveness is. And as long as we're talking about this, I also have trouble with the concept of unconditional love and actually said out loud in an argument BUT LOVE IS CONDITIONAL to a person who, um, isn't married to me anymore.
What's great about my life is that I have the time, that it's actually on my to do list to sit here and figure this out. Not unconditional love, who has time for that. I sort of think that forgiveness, though, might be so basic to me that I take it for granted, so perhaps I'm not an entirely bad person.
Harboring feelings of hatred is horrible for your well-being. You see, your mind doesn’t know the difference between past and present emotion. When you ‘hate’ someone, and you’re continuously thinking about it, those negative emotions are eating away at your immune system. You put yourself in a state of suckerism (technical term) and it stays with you throughout your day.
So forgiveness is, what, about how you feel? Like not staying mad at somebody. And also I think there's a part about not getting obsessed with getting even. Like the Mayo Clinic says, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge.
Well, yeah! Here's what I think about that, I think that emotions function to spur us to do what we need to do. Did I ever tell you, for over a year, every morning when I woke up, I used to color in a little box with how I felt. I was only allowed to use four colors, black (sadness), white (fear), red (happiness), and yellow (anger), everything that I felt was supposed to be a combination of those four emotions, I filled up an entire sketchbook with this. Why do I tell you these things. So you don't take me too seriously, I think. What I'm certified to do is plan and lead you in a fitness program, I'm not a qualified therapist or life coach and also by the way not a registered dietitian. I'm just a girl trying to figure out how to get out of bed and feed myself day after day, so take this for what it's worth. I think sadness is to make you rest, fear is to give you pause, happiness is to keep you in a good situation, and anger is to get you out of a bad situation.
The proper way that anger works is, you're in a bad situation and you feel angry and that feels bad. So properly you would get rid of the bad feeling by getting out of the bad situation. Anger is such a powerful feeling though, people freak out. They bottle it up and lose the name of action, or it gets unbottled and gets all over the place and loses the name of action. "Lose the name of action" is Hamlet, by the way, pretty much the poster child for anger gone bonkers. Pretty much what I'm saying is that anger has to be paired with productive action and if there's a productive action to be taken, take it, and if there isn't a productive action to be taken, then let it go. Otherwise it's just making you feel bad for no reason, but I also bet that a lot of people can't forgive themselves for not taking action.
Anyway in my experience, taking appropriate action nicely mops up excess emotion. So there's nothing to forgive, the forgiveness is built in. Or silent, like the B in subtle.
