Release the Rope

Today's talk was regarding forgiveness. I know it's a topic that's discussed ad nauseum sometimes, but I truly feel like it's something that every single person can work on. Who in their life hasn't been hurt by someone or something, and how many of us are still holding on to that hurt?

I heard a great analogy today: "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." This is a quote by Buddha, and it gives me a great visual. I think about all the hours I've wasted thinking things over in my life and how much pain there was in those hours. I think about how muck better it would have been to work on letting go and moving forward rather than ruminating over what was so wrong and basically keeping myself standing still.

Reverend Alan discussed how we as vessels sometimes get tied to the "dock" of a situation and can't figure out how to sever the rope holding us here. He reminds us that the dock exists true enough, but the river we're immersed in never stops flowing forward; if we can just let go, we can flow with the river instead of watching the waters wash by us. There's no need to work on "forgiving and forgetting" what happened because you cannot change the past, but we can work on our experiences because of the situation and our responses.

If you think about it, our hurt and anger really do keep us from moving forward. It's true that whatever situation that happened did happen, and our feelings are valid, but so are our reactions to it, our thoughts about it, etc.. By forgiving, we aren't forgetting; we're just allowing ourselves to move beyond the dock. No matter how many miles we travel downstream, the dock will always be there, but we're no longer stuck to it and destined to remain there.

-- Jenn