Celebrate "Forgiveness Day"
Is it Forgiveness Day again?? Forgiveness Day falls on the everyday of every month. What feels better than forgiveness?
It is one of those feelings which resets our hearts and opens our lives to positivity and love. Unfortunately, we are in an era of attacking people for things they did long ago and treating it like we are the people they want us to be rather than the people we became. If a person does wrong, they feel it. We have to look at a couple of things for this to be possible. The Internet made the reality of haves and have nots more prominent in our minds. Social media made it easy to attach. A victim mentality is the fuel. All that has to happen is for a person to feel that they don’t have what they should have and it is the fault of someone else (see humanization). That is a license to attack.
It has been said that hate and anger is a poison pill that we take expecting it to hurt someone else. Let it go. Forgive everyone, look forward and move to a future with less poison.
Situational dynamics are always where I look first. Every person in prison has done something the law determined to be a reason to separate them from us. However, I contest that those poor people paid the price of everyone who had contact with them in their life. People don't just do wrong. People who are in prison are just partially at fault and the part of them that is at fault can ONLY happen because people around them failed. These poor people most times were born into lives of chaos, crime and dysfunction.
They start as children and live to the level of dysfunction set for them. Just look at incarceration levels. Are children of traditionally raised (two parents, careers, safe neighborhoods, good schools, well-crafted families and siblings) more likely to go to prison? No. Dysfunction, drugs, decay, lack of proper rearing, lack of education and support, non-aggressive and violent neighborhoods, schools and families where education is fostered, dark behaviors are managed out and everyone wants a good life are all involved. Never blame the person without blaming the community and in most cases, the people closest to them.
People want good. Also, if a person goes to prison it is because they did a crime. A crime is not who they are it is what they did. Their future is not labeled by that. If they are earnest, are sorry and are trying to better their lives and character than that is all we can ask. They are people and forgiveness plus repentance and living a better life as a result, is all we can ever do. They are not the same person who committed the crime. Stop labeling people and let them live free so they can have a second chance. Bury it. It could be you. What would you want?
Next, "he without sin cast the first stone." This single sentence said by Jesus Christ should just end this issue. Take a deep and long look at your work. Not just for the egregious acts but the ones of omission. We have all done things which hurt someone or did not help someone who needed it. We should all know this quote and we should all say this to others and to ourselves.
In Saving Private Ryan, there is a scene where an American soldier chooses not to shoot an enemy. That enemy later kills at least one other American. That is a crime of ommission. The lack of taking a specific action resulted in the death of another soldier. That is at least rooted in a beautiful sentiment. However, it is not always what we do to someone but knowing that we have put someone in a bad position. Maybe a bad person was in their life and as a result, bad happened. We need to see how we are hurting people (take a good look because some people are really good at not wanting to notice the hurt they inflict and hide behind a reason).
We are all so offended and we simplify really complicated situations. We are so used to the modern voyeuristic nature of social media and it has made us judge, jury and executioner. We hunt people rather than focus on our lives for both at what we did, those ways we hurt people (even if we act like we didn't) and spread rumors, made schoolmates or family members targets of our insecurity and jealousy. Nobody is without sin or innocent so when you want to judge, just pause and think of your faults.
With the existence of social media, we live in an era of broad brush inferred offense where the court room is the media and the jury are the consumers. Hostility, anger, revenge and all the other dark emotions are a poison pill that we take hoping to make the other person sick. Seek peace. Seek forgiveness and grow your light.