forgiveness.

it seems that we all have many lessons to learn in how to live, and they keep recurring in our lives until we've learned them well, every new lesson adding more nuance to that which we already know. i like to joke sometimes that i'm a slow learner. the thing about humor is that the best humor is subtle - it has enough truth in it to give one pause. an obvious joke only elicits a groan at best, and in my residual attempts at being the smart-ass kid that can make everyone laugh, i know that most of my humor is a bit wry, a bit edgy, a bit dark, and lately, a bit more self-deprecating. my friends who know me the best do not appreciate much of my humor these days. but getting back to the matter at hand, the concept of forgiveness has been something that keeps coming back in my thoughts, no matter how far i push it away, never satisfied with this or the other cliche, attaching itself, rather obtrusively i might add, to other conversations.

awhile ago, i read an article about the rwandan genocide, and paul wolfowitz in his new position at the world bank issued a formal apology stating something to the effect of "well, there's really not much we can do about it now, but we should at least say we're sorry for what happened". the thing about formal apologies is that they are rarely, if ever, real apologies. real apologies happen face to face, in moments of intense vulnerability. real apologies are perhaps the most intimate we can ever become with another human being. i have a hard time imagining wolfowitz allowing for that sort of intimacy and vulnerability, but i have also been told at times that i lack a certain capacity for imagination. the thought that i've been holding on to since reading that article has been "let's not confuse an apologist for an apology". i'm pretty proud of that line. but taking that line from the macro-critique of the crazy world in which we live, to the lives which we lead, is another thing altogether. suddenly, it's a lot less poetic and a lot less clever. now it's just damn judgemental. that's just mean.

but i want to talk about forgiveness because i yearn to understand it, viscerally. none of this talking around it that i've been engaging in for the better part of a year now. i wonder sometimes if we ever really forgive others in our lives for slights, real and imagined because intent to cause pain is really beside the point. it may be imagined to you, but it's real to me - that sort of thing. it occurred to me recently that perhaps we never really forgive those people who have hurt us the most - at least not in the way that all the self-help books tell you you should be able to forgive. you know, be the bigger person, practice love, let it go, move on with your life. no doubt, i'm a mover. i move quickly and often. but in my interactions with people, i know that my guardedness stems from not being able to forgive somebody else, in some other time.

and sometimes, i am so thoroughly convinced that i have managed to forgive somebody for that thing that happened however long ago that i can't even remember now what exactly happened and who said what and who did what, but then something happens that triggers the memory, and you can't always control what happens after the trigger is set. one of the most perplexing paradoxes seems to me to be the fact that those you love the most, can also be those you just cannot forgive. because it's the most hurtful things that are the hardest to forgive, but also the most necessary to forgive.

the trick about forgiveness is that i think that real forgiveness occurs when i can say that in those moments that i have such a hard time letting go, things did not go as i would have liked, setting me in a slightly different direction than i intended to go, but looking around now, i like where i'm at and can appreciate it enough to say that whatever got me here, was worth experiencing to get me through that which allowed me to be exactly here. it is, i think, perhaps one of the most difficult tricks we have to learn. it is also about forgiving one's self enough to really like her.

i like to think of it as a sort of method acting. there is always a space between who we are and who we want to be, and in order to get from here to there, we do our best to pretend that that space doesn't really exist. the more we can disappear into the role of who we want to be, the more convincing we are, and at some point, perception becomes reality. much like hegel's concept of thesis, antithesis, synthesis process on a personal level. i think the people i admire and respect the most are the best method actors. they have an uncanny ability to disappear into that role, such that there is no role.

i forget sometimes that truth is always simple. i like to pretend that forgiveness is complicated because it is difficult to execute, and i lose sense of content for form. but i think it's this simple: forgiveness is about practicing love until you can just live lovingly, because love demands acceptance of others and the self for who we are, in this moment, not who we want to be or wish others could be. forgiveness is about being able to see the difference between what is and what is possible.