Forgiveness is Not a Dirty Word

Forgiveness.

Some people see that as a bad word, a word that is about someone who harmed us, something that should be avoided.

That’s not what forgiveness is.

Recently, I was talking to my husband about a TV series that I watch, one in which one of the characters unexpectedly has his father back in his life, the father that was an abusive alcoholic when the character was growing up.  This is a situation I am very familiar with, having lived it myself.  I was telling my husband how impressed I was that the storyline wasn’t “He’s toxic, continue to hate him and push him away!” but rather one of forgiveness.  His daughters, his AA peers, they were pushing him to forgive, to see the person who was trying to be repentant and salvage a relationship, to see him as human.  I was impressed because this is not the popular social sentiment anymore.  We seem to think that forgiveness is about the one we are forgiving, but it is not, it is about ourselves.  The dictionary definition of “forgive” is to let go of anger, and letting go of anger, it is exactly what it is about.  We forgive for ourselves, not for the other person.  We stop ourselves from being consumed by a negative emotion that will turn to hate, an emotion with no positive end. 

The other night, on the show, I cried my eyes out at that moment that you could see the forgiveness occurring, because I love the character and want him to be a happy one!  Forgiveness releases the chains that bind you, allows you to see things more clearly, frees you from pain and being under control of the person who wronged you.

This is not to say that everyone in your life is good for you, I’m just saying that forgiveness actually gives you back control of your relationships and emotions.  Forgiving a parent for abusing you, forgiving a spouse who cheated on you, forgiving a friend from stealing from you, it doesn’t mean that what they did was OK.  It means that their action is not in control of your life and your emotions.  By all means, there are people we need to avoid for our own safety or sanity, but if you won’t let go of the anger and hate, you really haven’t released them from your lives, you’re letting them stay in control.

I forgave my own father long ago.  I still remember the bad things, but I also remember the good.  I remember the shared love of horror, crime, and mystery novels and movies.  I remember him showing me how to draw and giving me art supplies (even sending them to me as an adult!), I remember him coming to get me when I had an accident on my bicycle and my friends rode to my house for help.  I do also remember the dad who tore my entire bedroom apart looking for the keys my mom hid so he wouldn’t make good on his threat to run over a kid who rode his bike out in front of the car, who embarrassed the heck out of me by going to a father-daughter dance in 10^th grade drunk out of his mind, or my brother jumping him from behind to keep me from being hit, but I also saw his humanness, and how hurt his soul was when my mom divorced him and took us to another state, and I saw the transformation in him that the wake up call brought.  I attended his funeral about 10 years ago.  I never saw so many people at a funeral.  People came up to me to tell me how much he had meant in their lives in AA, how much he had helped them.  For all the hell he may have put me through, I’m still proud of him, still can see the man he was meant to be.  I am actually a lot like him.  Smart, hard working, introverted, strange sense of humor, artistic, and caring and forgiving.  

His ashes are in an urn on my bedroom shelf.  My son talks to them sometimes.  He’s never met his grandpa (not because I didn’t offer to bring him here, but because he was too proud to take money from me, another trait we share), but he knows the good things I’ve said about him and finds it comforting.

Forgiveness.  It’s not a bad word.  It doesn't change what happened, but it does change our outlook and affects our own happiness.

That's why they have wine.

The Elusive Question of Color

This may be really long, and maybe a little scattered, but I’m feeling very hopeful after a couple of recent conversations – one in “real life” and one online – in the last week that have shown that there are really people out there who can have open, non-political, discussions about race and culture.  Some will still read this with their political talking point glasses on, but some, I now know, can actually see past all of that stuff.

Skin color.  What does it really matter?  That question, well, it seemed to be the thing said for a long time in this country by those pushing for change.  Now, it seems to be being asked by those who are confused because they are judged for not thinking it matters.  It’s gotten to be a confusing muddle of information.

I would like to ask it though.  Skin color, what does it really matter?  Is it any different than eye color or hair color or the size of your ears or whether or not your belly button is an innie or outie?  Does the shared tone of your skin with someone actually mean you shared the same culture and experiences?  If I get a tan and am as dark as my husband, do I suddenly have more in common with him that matters?  If you are African American, do you share the same background, struggles, and goals as your neighbor who is of Haitian heritage?  Do I, as a “white” person with Polish and German heritages, have the same traditions as my friend with an Irish background?

To me, skin color is just a physical characteristic.  It means nothing more than if your pinky toe is longer or shorter than the one next to it.  So why do we invest so much energy into the tone of our skin?

There are, most definitely, people who judge on skin color, I’m not questioning that.  I am questioning why on earth we think this matters, and I’m talking to people of ALL skin tones.

I have been told I can’t understand because I’m white, because no one judges on that, that maybe I’m even envied.  If I was going to go the politically correct route, I’d say “Yes, I can’t understand, everyone thinks it’s wonderful that I have “white” skin, and I obviously have never, ever been judged on that.”  If I was going to go the politically correct route.  If I am intellectually honest, however, I can’t say that. 

In my 20’s, I lived with a man with whom I discussed marriage plans.  We even told my mom we were at some point planning to marry.  His mom, however, we didn’t tell her that, she didn’t like me.  Well, she liked talking to me, she liked how her younger kids got along with me and would be excited to tell me about their baseball games or their new toys when I came over, but she didn’t like that I was in a relationship with her son.  She didn’t like it because I was not Hispanic.  She never told me this outright, but she spoke it in front of me in Spanish constantly to her son.  She didn’t care if he found someone Argentinian, like they were, but she wanted him to find someone Hispanic.  A couple of weeks before we broke up, I told him I was not going to live my life with someone whose mother didn’t want me there, and a son that wasn't going to defend me.  Yes, I revealed that this little blonde Polish girl actually understood every darn conversation that went on about me.  Surprise! 

That is just one example in my 50 years of life.  I get it.  I get that sometimes there are people who look differently at those outside of their own culture.  I understand how it feels.  I don’t understand why we judge on that, or, more recently why we are judged for not judging on that.

The term “colorblind,” this was the goal some years ago, meaning to be able to look past someone’s skin color.  That term now carries negative connotations.  Why?  I was told recently that it is because people are ignoring other’s skin color and aren’t “embracing” their skin color, celebrating it.  And here I am very confused.  It’s skin color.  I don’t embrace and celebrate eye colors, I’m not sure exactly what it means to embrace and celebrate someone’s skin color, even my own.  It’s skin.  It’s an organ we all have.  It varies in shade, even among the “colors” we have defined.  I have no clue how to embrace it.  And wasn’t ignoring it kind of the goal at one point?  Why have we gone from realizing it doesn’t matter, to now realizing that it does?

Is part of our issue being comfortable in our own skin?  We are terribly oversensitive to if someone thinks we are too tall or too short, too skinny or too fat.  We hate our hair texture, the size of our nose, the size of our butts, the hair on our bodies… Is this part of the same thing?  Something else that was brought up in a discussion was that people of a certain race, within their own race, tend to judge each other on their lightness or darkness.  Is this issue maybe part of what is assumed those of other races are judging on too? At this point in time, is what we really need to do is learn to appreciate ourselves and all of our own physical characteristics? Can we help to combat some racism by having true love for ourselves and who we are, and realizing that those that don’t love us for ourselves are the ones losing out?

We all come from different backgrounds, different cultures and different mixes of cultures, we all have different personalities, different looks, different thoughts and feelings.  Every single one of us is different from the other, and all of us have some common characteristics with a wide range of other people.  However, we have this love of grouping and labeling ourselves into small definitions for some reason.  Maybe we need to stop that?

Many of our differing opinions on things, while they can be rooted in our background and culture, are influenced often by other things, such as age, education, work experience, life experience.  While we come from different cultures, we can have similar values as those not of our own, and we can have vastly different ones from our own children.

Just take a little time to ponder why we base so much on some arbitrary physical characteristic.  If you have insight into some of my questions, please offer it.

That’s why they have wine.