The F-bomb

I bet you thought this blog was going to be about a four-letter word. One that makes little old ladies and babies cry. No, this F-bomb has eleven letters, and so far the only person I've seen it make cry is my damn self.

It's still hard to say the word out loud. I practiced it in person on someone this past weekend. I had to look not in the eyes but just below, just at the apple of the cheek, and say it syllable by syllable, slowly, wincing...

For...

give...

...

...ness.

I follow omens, follow the path the universe lays out before me, and sometimes life's nudges feel more like shoves. I've definitely been feeling some shoves into this, but then the good lord doesn't give us anything we can't handle, right? So I reckon it's damned time for me to learn this very important life lesson.

I'm reading up about For...give...ness... and what it means. I intend to write about it more later, but I want to share this little anecdote I've learned right now. I've been studying what forgiveness means scientifically, and what it means to buddhists, christians, muslims, hindi and jews. The Jewish bit has really really gotten to me especially. Here's the thing they believe - if you do wrong, you make two sins. One sin is against God because you broke his rules, and the other is against the person you actually wronged. You can ask God to forgive you for sinning against him, and he probably will because he's God and he's cool like that. But you also have to ask forgiveness from that person. God can only forgive what you did to him, not what you did to that person. And the person has no religious obligation to forgive you unless you ask. Here's where it gets really fascinating. If the offender goes to the offended and apologizes and the offended does not forgive, the offender walks away. If the offender apologizes a second time and the offended does not forgive, again nothing happens. But if this happens a third time, a third apology and a third refusal, then the offender (if s/he was really sincere) is now absolved of all guilt, and the guilt now belongs to the person who refused the apologies.

Freaking heavy. My little dabbles in forgiveness have been going really well. Like, bliss-inducingly well. I'm not going to lie - I'm really getting a taste for the stuff. I want more.