Duh.

I am madly in love with Alan Shore and his amazing closings.

I'm just saying. That wasn't what I wanted to write though.

My point is:
I'm retarded.
All that stuff about forgiveness.
Yeah, of course it's about letting go.
And what is letting go about?
Closure.

Seriously, how could I have forgotten that.
On Boston Legal the other night, Allan Shore argued that a mixture of revenge and justice can give a person the greatest and most satisfying closure.
Merriam-Webster says closure is, "an often comforting or satisfying sense of finality closure; also : something (as a satisfying ending) that provides such a sense."
In other words, it's understanding and acceptance.

And those two are pretty closely linked. For the most part, understanding is key to acceptance. Which is where the difficulty lies. How can you accept what you don't understand? And how do you come to understand what you cannot comprehend?
Sometimes, I think it just takes a bit of help from someone else. A different perspective.
But other times, I think you simply can't. In certain situations at certain times in certain places, you just can't. At which point, you just have to accept the fact that you can't understand, and therefore can't accept.

On the whole, it's not easy, is it?
Then again, what in life is?

"There are many things that we would throw away...

...if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."
- Oscar Wilde

Okay, so I was musing about forgiveness a while back, but it was completely illogical in practical application, which I realized even then. Saying the words and meaning them are two different things, obviously.

In a way, forgiveness is all about vindiction - it's all about letting go. And I've come to wonder if the act of letting go is something to be achieved, or something that just occurs. Can you make yourself let something go? Can you force yourself to drop a grudge or erase bitterness? Or is it something that just happens, something for which you need to wait? And if it is possible to make yourself let go, how do you go about it? What do you do to make yourself forgive and forget?

I feel like it isn't possible to be able to force yourself to let go of something, be it pain, bitterness, anger, or even love or desire. You can't insist that you forgive someone - if you try, you'll only be saying the words, going through the motions - for all intents and purposes, you'll simply be lying to both yourself and the person seeking or deserving your pardon. And you may honestly know they deserve it: you may be aware that you should be able to let go, forgive, and move on. You may be a bit ashamed that some kind of immaturity is holding you back from letting go. But emotionally, you can't. How do you come to terms with those emotions, let go of the bitterness, drop the grudge, forget what has upset you?

Though, is it really immaturity? What is it, exactly, that stops us from from wanting to forgive? In adults, it certainly seems like it's immaturity. It's exploited for comedy at times - in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Harry can't forgive Harmony for sleeping with his best friend when they were in high school 'cause she'd promised not to, even though that was probably a good 15, 20 years earlier, and he can't stop repeating, "You slept with [him]." It's a really funny sequence, and it makes him seem like he's a teenager trapped in a man's body, who's being really immature. But is that really accurate? Why is that so "immature"? Is it really, or has society just labeled it as immature?

It's difficult: why can't we let go? Do we just have to wait it out? Does it simply vary from person to person - is it easy for some, harder for others? I guess what you're letting go factors into the equation, too. If all you can do is wait for the feeling to pass, wait to want to forgive, what do you do in the mean time? How do you handle what it is you want to let go?


One night several weeks before Daniel had taken her out to dinner and asked for a divorce, she'd woken up and seen that he wasn't in bed. She found him in the living room, in the armchair, looking out at the rain. The wind was shrill against the windows, rocking the trees. Sylvia loved a storm at night. It made everything simple. It made you content just to be dry.

Obviously it was having different effect on Daniel. "Are you happy?" he had asked.

This sounded like the start of a long conversation. Sylvia didn't have on her robe or her slippers. She was cold. She was tired. "Yes," she said, not because she was, but because she wanted to keep things short. And she might be happy. She couldn't think of anything making her unhappy. She hadn't asked herself that question for a very long time.

"I can't always tell," Daniel said.

Sylvia heard this as a criticism. It was a complaint he'd made before--she was too subdued, too reticent. When would she learn to let go? Water poured from the gutters onto the deck. Sylvia could hear a car pass on Fifth Street, the shhh of its tires. "I'm going back to bed," she said.

"You go on," Daniel told her. "I'll be along in a minute."

But he wasn't, and she fell asleep. She had a familiar dream. She was in a foreign city and no one spoke the languages she spoke. She tried to call home, but her cell phone was dead. She put the wrong money in the pay phone, and when she finally got it right, a strange man answered. "Daniel's not here," he told her. "No, I don't know where he went. No I don't know when he'll be back."

In the morning she tried to speak to Daniel, but he was no longer willing. "It was nothing," he said. "I don't know what that was about. Forget it."


----------------
Listening to: Mandy Moore - All Good Things

"Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart."

Okay. So everything we learn as we grow up tells us the same thing, pretty much: forgiveness is good. Forgive everyone. No matter how you look at it, forgiveness is the right thing to do - it makes you the bigger person, always. Okay. I think this is garbage.

If we don't have the will to forgive someone for something they've done against us, should we forgive them anyway? Or rather, try to forgive them anyway? Does being a good person mean we have make ourselves forgive everyone, whether we want to or not? I guess in theory, it does. In theory, I think we are supposed forgive everyone. In practice...not so much.

What good comes of forgiving someone we don't want to forgive, just because it's the right thing to do? What does that do for us, or for them, for that matter? Just because we say the words, doesn't mean we feel it - it doesn't mean we act like we mean it. Who does that help? Let's say I forgive someone for wronging me, for hurting me, but I don't want to - I'm still angry and hurt. Won't that anger come through in my behavior, still, even if I am the most patient person in the world (which I most certainly am not)? And aren't I lying to both this other person and to myself?

Okay, so what if I want to forgive someone, want to be able to forgive them, but I can't? I can't let go of what's in the past yet - I'm too close to it. Let's say they want to be forgiven, and I tell them I forgive them - will, in trying to act as though I really have forgiven them, I slowly come to feel it myself?

The flip side is finding yourself feeling forgiving towards a person you don't want to forgive. Someone who causes major pain or upset in your life that you don't want to let off the hook. What do you do if you find yourself forgiving them anyway? Should you resist, or just let it be?

Then, love has to be factored in. At what point does the actions of someone you love become unforgivable? How far does forgiveness go if the love is real? Your spouse cheats on you but swears he or she won't again, and wants to stay with you. Is that forgivable?

"You know, I don't think there's anything truly unforgivable. Not where there's love."
- Sylvia, The Jane Austen Book Club
(Yes, I am aware how much I've quoted that, recently.)

I hate these questions. I really do. I've found myself in every single one of these situations, and I can never decide what to do. Generally I go by, "Forgive, don't forget." But sometimes, I think, what I wouldn't give to just be able to forgive, forget, and move on...to just let go.


"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


----------------
Listening to: Goo Goo Dolls - Can't Let It Go