Out of Pod Experience

I suppose all of the old philosophies have teachings about forgiveness. The ones I've seen present it like this: If you don't forgive, you're holding a negative in you that's probably hurting you more than it's hurting the other person. You're just binding yourself and limiting your own freedom of action by holding onto that grudge. If you let it go and let the other person go, you just increase your own power, freedom, happiness and well-being.

Interestingly enough, the times I have felt angry at someone, I usually end up realizing my flaws, perhaps part of my Imperial Conditioning at College, or perhaps the fact once someone told me a lot of stuff no one ever again will tell me about myself: THE COLD UNCARING TRUTH.

I can forgive people most of the time (I´m human after all) but what I have found that works wonders is replaying the scenario over and over and instead of focusing on the other person I focus on myself and myself alone. What I said, the way I said it and how I reacted.

Most of the time I end up knowing deep within that I was at fault too and sometimes to my horror and shock I was totally at fault once the heat of the moment dies down, and as I grow older I avoid more and more the situations where others are totally at fault, you end up knowing how to "judge character", its a perk of growing old.

Resentments lie still in my mind, but I am better able to grasp with them and question my motives after a lot of soul-searching for inciting or having been part of a conflict.

I also live under the adage of "No pedirle Peras al Olmo" or not asking for a seed tree to give you sweet fruit (more or less).

When you begin to understand people´s limits on the things they can give you you can actually know the things you want out of people and begin to discriminate them in more proper niches of thinking and thus socialization.

I still remember my father once explaining to my mother something that made me begin thinking like that.

Once, many moons ago, my mother had a maid, this maid was from a very poor socio-economical strata, had ways of thinking that were very concrete and was for lack of better terms a "simple" person.

One day my mother told her to wash everything in bleach, that she only trusted bleach to clean anything , specially dishware, clothes etc. Now this was part in jest of my mother , but the maid took it literally and an hour later she came screaming to my mother showing her chemically burned hands and asking my mother what to do , since she was in pain.

That night my mother was angry at this person screaming furiously how someone could do such a thing? Can´t she see it was harmful?

Then my father calmly told her , in a very condensed form , how some people simply can´t act beyond their limitations, else this maid would be something else than a maid, or at least , a much better maid with a better sense of self-preservation.

This led me to believe in many things, and to understand that no matter what , people are prisoner of themselves, of their limitations, regardless of social status, wealth, degrees or pedigree.

Such slavery to your own preconceptions, ways of thinking and environment truths was for me, abhorrent. The Whole Universe of humanity now lurked back at me with its hands burned, blaming anyone but themselves.

Akin to my fear and existential angst of people that could calmly stay in the place of their birth and never moving more than a couple miles off it to die during their whole lives. I respect their choices, but sometimes I wonder if given the choice they would live their lives differently, if they could see more, know more, I know I would. One lifetime is not enough to do anything, anything at all.

So it is with peoples minds.

We all are slaves to ourselves, and knowing this, you need to know how some people WILL NEVER EVER give you anything of what you want out of them.

Saving them, helping them is optional, understanding them is not in my book.

With this in mind I became less quarrelsome, I hate diving into someone else´s delusion of life only to reinforce their inner status quo, total waste of time, I have my own delusion of life to maintain and not interested in other´s.

I lapse, I am human, I err, but afterwards I go back to this very principle.

Everyone is burned by their own bleach. I have no need to burn them or be burned by them. People hardly will give you even the most remote acknowledgment in any kind of social interaction, thus I treasure greatly the few people I know can give me WHAT I WANT from them: honesty and the COLD HARD TRUTH, and you as a human being know this already.

You know the few people that give you this mutual acknowledgment, those are the only people worth sharing with, knowing fully well they might burn you back, but you know it and accept it.

This is my thinking. It will not help others, it will not clear this eternal debate, but it works for me.

To forgive people, know who they are, and knowing them is your first and last duty to others.

From that point on, it´s up to you to share their burns.

And we go back to the beginning, how to let them burn you and not blame them?

In short I think we expect too much out of people, and even worst, we expect more out of friends and family, perhaps not expecting much from them would be a start?

Also remember that a lot of people function by the universal principle of what they are doing it´s not wrong, you way otherwise is.

An alarming trend I assure you, but one you have to keep in mind when dealing with others.

I suffer daily , specially with older people, this. Thus I believe the root of the problem in this quandary is this:

WHY YOU WANT FORGIVENESS?

Do you ... NEED it?

You WANT others to give it to you?

or you WANT to give it to others and LET THEM KNOW about it?

Fact is, my prior statement does not involve forgiveness, in a traditional sense, but acceptance of the inherent flaws in humanity, myself included, forgiveness in a traditional sense is not implied nor required in my statement.

Perhaps forgiveness is a completely wrong concept? Acceptance perhaps? Understanding?

I believe we don´t need forgiveness at all. The whole concept is loaded with unnecessary luggage.

The same quote is in step 1 of the OP lol. Well, a "similar" quote

"'Hating someone is drinking poison and expecting the other person to die from it.'"
Well whaddya know, that must be where I got it from.