I'm tellin' ya, sometimes…
My subconscious. It can be real pushy. Almost like it sees what's comin' and wants to equip me with the best chance to survive.
Which apparently involves the wee bit of transcendence on my part.
See, when I woke up this mornin', the message from my subcon was forgiveness. Oh, man. Not that again!
Hey, I'm not disrespectin' forgiveness. I think I have a pretty good understanding of forgiveness, certainly at the intellectual level. At the practical level (and when I say practical, I mean emotionally retarded), I don't execute so well. I believe in the power of love…
But.
There are some people who have just pissed me off! I mean it. I consider myself in recovery—hi, my name is bill and I'm a dick—I think I’m a halfway decent human being. And you know I wouldn't indulge such and attitude if I wasn't right. Right? Ack! The Fallacy of Being Right.
Grudges. I wouldn't have 'em if they were just fake news. Some people done me wrong!
Uh, well, yeah, I, uh, if I look back…which is a bozo no-no, there's nothing in the past to help us, so we don't go there. Unless. It serves as evidence. In my case, the evidence would suggest that the reason for holding the grudge is over some relatively minor offense. If I look real close, I can see that some of my grudges are based on vaporware. If asked what this category of grudges did, I would have to concede that I pretty much made it all up.
In fact, none of the reasons for any of my grudges would hold up under closer scrutiny.
Like I say—recovering dick.
I read a book some years back, on the topic of forgiveness. It got down into the weeds on things like forgiving murder. One of the key premises is that the forgiveness is only involved with such serious misdeeds. If you look anything less serious of a transgression, your pet peeves and beyond…you'll see it's more a matter of acceptance than forgiveness. Forgiveness is reserved for the most heinous.
I have been successful with forgiveness campaigns. I used to do some serious ruminating over doctors. Oh my god, like an obsession. (Easy to be, when every movement of your body causes a stabbing pain.) And work situations, companies, bosses. Yikes.
But.
I knocked all those down! For real, I was able to wield forgiveness like a water cannon. I hosed down all my grudges, cleaned the deck so only petrified fossils were left.
Then, time goes by…there are opportunities. To rebuild my grudge file! To beef up the rumination rolodex. (Like anyone's gonna know what a rolodex is.)
So here I am, looking at all my relationships, including all the fractured ones…and I pull in my grudges, to disposition them with unconditional forgiveness and take myself back to baseline on the retarded emotional intelligence scale.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention…when it comes to forgiveness, often the toughest button to button is oneself. I could review my collection of grudges and the tenuous nature of their origin—and give myself shit for wasting so much time and energy.
No, no, no. You don't have to start with yourself (although it wouldn't hurt), but you sure have to make sure you include yourself. In the glorious relief of forgiveness. I'll testify to that. It's only once you start forgiving you have any appreciation for the load you've been carrying.
Listen, it's the coronavirus pandemic. If ever there was at time to put things in perspective, now's the time.