I have led an interesting life. One cannot really have an interesting life unless they surround themselves with other people. Sure, there are solo type adventures and others who choose to live a life of isolation that are unique and interesting, but when one encounters other free-willed human beings on a regular basis, there is a lack of control which comes from not knowing what other people will do.
When you are truly alone and isolated, there is no chance of other people crossing your path to alter your life. The more isolated and remote you are from humanity, the more protected you are from having others do things in your life, including doing hurtful, hateful things to you. Of course you always risk other forms of setbacks such as at the hands of nature like animals who may have crossed your path, the weather gone awry, or even the aging process of your body may not be welcomed guests in your life, but at least when they do meet up with you it is not out of spite that they wish to make your life uncomfortable.
By all means, if you wish to never feel hurt or upset again in your life, then go to the most far and remote place on earth alone. As long as you have peace within yourself and you love yourself, then you will be untouched by others. If not, you will be your own torturer.
Escaping from people does not always mean freedom from being hurt. It is very limiting for your growth process to be alone. We need other people. We need to connect to a common element, something familiar. When we keep away from other humans, our minds tend to become warped. Any “inner demons” we may have been carrying can fester when away from other people who can often enlighten you in other directions.
Many, though not all, who choose to be loners do so because they have been hurt by others and do not wish to feel the pain caused by interacting with other people. Some of these people also have feelings of self-hatred and isolation from other people does not resolve the feelings of hurt because now they are the ones who hurt themselves with a constant negative inner dialogue bashing themselves and rationalizing why others are only going to make their life worse.
Serial killers, such as Jeffrey Dahlmer, have started out with warped minds and kept themselves in isolation from others only to have their sick thoughts fester. Without being near people, they have no real guidance or model of normalcy and continue in their dark worlds which they believe, on some level, is normal. So to act out what a sick mind dictates only seems natural to the loner, even if only for the moment.
We need other people just to keep balanced. The drawback for being around other people – other people will hurt us from time to time. Sometimes people will do the most awful things to us on purpose while others may unintentionally hurt us. They may hurt us as a result of a bad decision or in order to protect themselves without considering how their actions would harm other people. They may hurt us because they are angry, hurt or upset and lash out at us only because we are there or in retaliation because we were the one to hurt them. Sometimes people are mean-spirited and just love to cause pain in others because they can.
Life is not always fair and just, but you can balance the odds in your favour. Once you accept that you cannot control other people, but only have control over yourself then you can live your life without overreacting to chaos when it comes your way. You can see it coming, brace yourself, brush yourself off and move on. When you indulge in the thought that – life is “supposed to be” fair and everyone “should” do right by others and if not it is only fair if they get punished accordingly – then you will face a huge disappointment when it does not happen and be hurt by your own belief. Remember, you can only control yourself. You cannot control other people. They have free will just as you do.
Does this sound discouraging to you? It really is not meant to get you depressed over factors you cannot control, but to point out the really encouraging fact that you do have more control over your life than if you live your life dependent on the results of other people. If you do not depend on others for your happiness or your “fate” then you will do what it takes to make your life what you want it to be – even if you do have setbacks you can shake off the dust and keep moving forward.
Forgiveness is a major part to keep you moving forward. In order to overcome the hurtful events brought into your life experience as a result of others or by your own actions – One must forgive others, especially themselves. Why?
When we feel we are wronged by others, internally it does things to us. Our blood pressure rises. The fight or flight mechanisms within our brains kicks in pumping our bodies full of adrenaline. Our focus point is on the one who wronged us and how to get back which narrows our viewpoint into finding a reasonable solution that can often cause us to do things out of haste we may later regret.
When we have done wrong, it also does something to us. Assuming you grew up with a conscience, you will have the inner knowing you did something wrong. You worry about being caught. You worry about the consequences to yourself when you are caught such as the shame, humiliation, and the retribution you may have to face. This invokes the same physical response of wronging others such as the higher blood pressure and extra adrenaline pumping through your body.
Unless your deed catches up with you instantaneously, you find yourself always looking over your shoulder and paranoid about the day when and if you ever are found out. You may go through extra hoops to cover your tracks making your first mistake compounded by more mistakes. You live your life in fear of a day that may or may not come to pass which holds you back from really making greater strides in your life. Even if you got a lot accomplished while in hiding from your deed, you could have accomplished a lot more if it were not haunting you.
When that day catches up to you, or if you are instantly caught in the deed of doing wrong to others, a weight is lifted after you suffer the humiliation, shame and embarrassment. You pay your consequences for what was done and then you can move on. Or you can choose to live in denial of how your actions hurt other, if you have a conscience then you will only torture yourself for the rest of your life.
You see, the person with a conscience will either have to come to the conclusion that what they have done was hurtful or suffer internal pain at their own hands when they live in denial because somewhere in the back of their minds they know they have done wrong. They may think they have moved on, but something can come up or they may pass you in the street and are instantly reminded they have a debt to pay to that person. Whether or not you forgive them does not matter to them until they make it right within themselves and it will never be truly made right within themselves until they make amends to those they have hurt.
We have a legal system which is “supposed to” punish those who do wrong to attempt to make things just for those who were hurt by others. Sometimes this is the only way to get after people without a conscience and make them pay for their actions when they are not otherwise internally prodded to do. If the justice system is successful, these people are punished and do forced penance to make amends. Sometimes justice fails and they get off scott free.
Often the victims of these people do not get the feeling of relief of “justice” being carried out. Some of them feel they cannot move on without the person truly begging their forgiveness and in many cases they will never see that day. Those people will live a life with a ball of anger towards that person holding out for an apology that will never come. Even if the sentence carried out by the court is life in prison or the death penalty, they may never let go of the fact they have been wronged by someone who doesn’t care about what they did.
When you are in the state of holding a grudge against one who wrongs you, this puts you in a bad place you do not deserve to be in. You certainly did not ask for the wrong consequence to happen to you, but it did. As long as you hold that grudge in your heart, you have relinquished all control over your feelings to the person who has wronged you. In other words, you have sold your feelings into slavery to a person who does not care about how you feel. If they did care, they would have made amends and you would have moved on.
You cannot always count on the actions of other people. Sometimes people will do wrong by you and never admit to it, never be punished for it, and most of all will never make amends for what they have done to you. When that happens, it will hurt. How long you decide to be in this state of hurt, however, is up to you. You can choose to nurse that hurt and let it fester and grow into hatred which holds you back from living your life to the fullest. When you choose that path, you let that person who wronged you succeed in dragging you down.
Why let them hurt you any longer than you must? When they initially hurt you, that was the moment they had the power to control a part of your life because you felt hurt by their actions, after the initial encounter, they are often unaware they have this power over you because you are carrying the wound internally. It is very normal and very human to experience this uncontrollable emotion at the beginning. It is unavoidable, so do not beat yourself up as you were in the heat of the moment and this control they had on you was an instantaneous thing. The good news is after the initial shock of the encounter, you can work through the pain and move on.
If you break your arm, the bone will not heal in nanoseconds. You realize your arm is broken. You may cry and writhe in pain. You cannot control that and it is natural. A reasonable person will seek medical help to get their arm back to normal. When you are hurt by others, you must do what it takes to heal your wounds if you want to return to a normal life.
If you broke your arm and decided you were just going to continue on with the pain, people would think you were crazy. Why would you nurse and nurture the pain of a broken arm which would cause you to become less effective in every area of your life when you could just go to a doctor who could set the bone and make it heal so you would get better? This is what you do when you fester a grudge.
When you allow these feelings of hatred to fester, you have handed that person total control over your emotions. Do they really deserve to have this power over you? Did they really earn the right to make you feel this way forever?
To detach yourself from the power others SEEM to have over you, you must forgive them, even if they never acknowledge wrong or are never punished. You must do this for only your benefit, it is not to let the other person off the hook. By all legal and social standards, they must pay for what they have done. This includes you standing up for yourself in whatever way possible. This has nothing to do with you punishing them. You are forgiving them so you can heal and move on with your life without having to carry the burden of a grudge.
As I said in the beginning of this sermon, I have had an interesting life. While I have experienced many great things and enjoyed the company of many different people, I have also experienced great pain at the hands of others. If you want to have the best experiences of life, you need people in your life. Sometimes people will hurt you. That is a fact of life.
Sure, there were the normal hurts of childhood when you have disagreements with siblings or feeling you were unfairly punished by a parent. Everyone goes through those things and some even grow up hating their families over things considered minor spats by others. Sure, they have done things to me they may or may not regret and I have done things I am not proud of either. The bottom line is we are a family and I love them. I forgive what they have done to me as they have forgiven me for my past transgressions. I know they did the best they could and any hurt they laid on me was not intentional. It went both ways. This is what makes for a healthy relationship. You must forgive so you can move beyond the past.
I have been the target of bullies in school, both from other kids and by a few teachers. Not just a random bully here and there, but a tag team of children who would gang up on me and make my school life a living hell as well as teachers who would look the other way when they were bullying me. These things happen all the time everywhere in the world and can cause a person to snap. Look at the examples from numerous school shootings. I almost went to that point.
I remember two of my bullies who would keep harassing me for years. The last encounter was in physical education on the last day of trading classes. I was so tired of them picking on me I came prepared with a straightedge razor. On cue, they started to harass me. I had my razor in hand and was ready to do some serious damage to those girls who felt no remorse nor shame at their daily constant torture of me.
Fortunately, I was stopped before I could even touch them. I am glad now that I was stopped. Had I succeeded in what I had planned, I would have scarred their faces for life. I would have had to face a juvenile detention sentence. I would not have been allowed to finish high school in a normal setting. I would not be where I am today had I done that to them.
I could have thrown my life away over an incident that was a mere minor fraction of my lifetime…one that I would have eventually been far removed from very shortly in time, even if it did seem like an eternity. When you are angry, you suffer horrific tunnel vision. Carrying that kind of grudge keeps you in that kind of tunnel vision. Letting go of a grudge opens your mind to a bigger and better world out there.
Those two girls would never apologize to me. They probably don’t even feel remotely guilty for the torture they put me through. They don’t know what kind of life I had before they started picking on me which only made my emotional pain worse. I know I will never have restitution from them.
Does that mean I should let the pain they caused me fester? I could remain always angry at what they did, but how would that be productive to my life? For many years I did carry a grudge, then I refused to deal with the feelings of hurt, but that did not make me feel better.
My life is more important than what happens to them. They do not deserve to have the power of holding hurt and hatred over my head. They are no longer a daily part of my life. If I were to see them walking down the street, it would not invoke fear inside because I have power over myself as I took it back from them.
It would have been nice to hear them apologize to me, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve moved on and by releasing the power they had over me, I can live a better life. If they choose to live in denial over what they have done and if they have any conscience, they will be miserable enough carrying this dent in their souls. It may be a minor dent as far as they are concerned, but it is still enough to hold them back. I cannot afford to spend my life’s energy carrying that negative vibe when I want more positive energy flowing in me. In order to move forward, I had to forgive and let it go.
I lived in a rough neighborhood. While I was only 16, I was walking when I noticed a gang hanging out across the street. I walked in a different direction hoping they did not notice me. Unfortunately, they did. One of them steered away from the group and started walking behind me. I could feel the notion that something bad was about to happen, but I decided not to turn around. I could hear him walking faster behind me. Then I ran and he ran after me. I tried to make it to a friend’s house, but he caught me before I could get there and mugged me.
Initial shock kicked in and I was in a daze as I walked all the way home. Then I broke down and cried at the injustice. I only told my sister what happened and did not want to think about it anymore. All I knew is I did not want to feel that way anymore, so I disconnected myself from the situation which is one of the worst things a person can do when confronted with trauma. When you do not deal with a problem, it festers worse than being in a state of non-forgiveness. If you never deal with the trauma, you can never overcome it. This was only one of the many things I have tried to suppress.
When I was only nine years old, I was molested and raped for a period of five years by my mother’s best friend’s husband. Needless to say there was very much a big plate of hurt piled up for me. To rub further salt into the wounds, when the secret was out, he denied it ever happened and the elders from my former religion implied that it was somehow my fault and I should not press charges.
By the time I got to college, I was a confused 17 year old mess. I had a lot of repressed pain and anger over the vile things people have done to me. To make things worse, I was the youngest person living in the coed dorm and knew nothing about the ways of the world. Those people had a lot of fun at my expense. Then when things were bad enough, it got worse when I was raped. Like a deer in the headlights, I froze.
Later when that incident came out to the elders of my former religion, they said I was guilty of fornication because I did not scream and I was not to discuss the matter with anyone. Nice religion, eh?
These events and the losing of a religion was finally getting to me. I was taught that this one religion was the only way to God and to leave it would put me at risk for dying at the end of the world which would be coming any day soon. By that point, I did not care if I died at the end of the world. I welcomed it. I was in so much pain I wanted to end it all. I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder which was misdiagnosed in the beginning as paranoid schizophrenia. I was going through a rough time caused by all the pain inflicted on my by other people and I lashed out by intentionally and unintentionally inflicting pain on others.
After a few years of going in and out of mental hospitals and not really remembering great chunks of the years 1986-1988, I was getting tired of the pain. That very brief period of my life felt like a very dark eternity. I knew life had to be better. My survival instinct took over because I was at the point where I knew I would either have to succeed with suicide and get it over with or get off this scary roller coaster ride and find a safer one.
It was only after I made that decision to put my own life in my hands and stop letting the past hurt me so that I could recover. It wasn’t an automatic thing and took years to heal the wounds. I had to not only show that I had enough love and respect for myself, but had to learn to forgive myself for my past mistakes and forgive others for what they have done to me. When I got to that place was when my life became so much better.
You had things happen in your life to cause you pain at the hands by other people. I know you can relate. This is part of the human experience. How we deal with things is what will make it better or worse.
Sometimes you do things yourself which can cause you regret. It might be that you lashed out at another person, or you did something on purpose or accidentally which caused a person pain and it makes you feel bad. Perhaps you made a mistake and in covering up your tracks you have done something which would have gotten someone else caught up in your mistakes.
When we do such things, we hurt ourselves as well as others. When you hurt others, the remedy is easy to fix. Own up to what you did and make amends. Whether they forgive you or not is not up to you, but as long as you know you did everything humanly possible to make amends, you can move on with your life. If they decide to hold a grudge against you in spite of all you have tried to do to make up, that is their problem and their burden to carry.
When the hurt is solely on us, we become the hardest ones to forgive. We may replay the incident over and over in our minds and point out the things we could have or should have done, but it is now too late and the damage cannot be undone. We cannot change the past, but we can only try to make things right so we can move on. Once we made things right with others, we need to learn to move on ourselves. Take what lessons you can from your past and learn from them. You are human and will make mistakes. We are all learning and your past mistakes are not unique. If you want to move on with your life, let it go.
Forgive does not mean forget!
The old saying, “Forgive and forget” is complete and utter nonsense. Forgiving is a must in order for you to move on with your life. Every experience in life, no matter how painful, is a learning experience. Why forget what you learned?
This does not mean to encourage you to continue nursing your grudge, but to learn from the situation that brought you pain so you can do better in the future.
If a person was abusing you, if you loved yourself enough you would leave the situation so you could eventually move towards forgiveness to free you from that abusive person. Should you forget about what they have done, you put yourself in the dangerous path of returning to the abuser who may not have really learned from their mistakes and they will continue to abuse you because you “forgot” about the past.
Always remember the mistakes and do not be afraid to learn from them.
Life is a wonderful experience and having people around make it that much more interesting. Just be mindful of others and be aware that the more people you allow into your life, the more you increase your chances of being hurt. It is a worthy exchange on the chance of being hurt for the great experience of love and companionship.
Just remember, forgiveness is a cornerstone towards living a better life.
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