Welcome back, my friend!
This week has been one of the lowest of my whole life, but it has also been one of the most reflective, inquisitive, and soul-searching weeks as well.
There was a lot of breathwork, questioning why, digging deep to the roots of emotions, shadow work, Reiki, EFT tapping, and gentle reminders of gratitude amongst the chaos raging inside. From it all, I’ve learned what it means to choose happiness over anger and forgiveness over pain.
Watching my parents navigate their relationships with me, with each other, and with their friends have taught me so much about forgiveness and love and gratitude and patience; between the millions of tiny arguments I’ve had with my dad or the times I’ve seen my parents argue or the times we’ve been hurt by family friends, I’ve understood that to some extent, love and family and friendship will always come with compromise and require forgiveness.
No matter who it is, whether it’s a spouse or a sibling or a friend, there is guaranteed to be differences in opinion or understanding or rationale that will lead to being hurt to various degrees. When that happens, each person is faced with a choice: either you stick with them or you part ways.
The thing is, even when you know you want to stay despite the hurt, it isn’t necessarily easy to forgive and let go. But holding onto the resentment or the sadness leads to so much more pain that it may destroy the very relationship you chose to stay in.
Think about it: you stay with someone because you love them and you enjoy their presence; maybe they make you laugh until your belly hurts or they let your inner child run wild and free whenever you’re with them. No matter what your reason is, if you hold onto the pain they caused you (or the pain you caused them), the only thing you succeed in doing is deepening and widening the rift between you, which means losing the very things about your relationship that makes it meaningful and happy for you.
Holding on to hurt, whether intentionally or not, means letting go of the person you love and the things you love about your relationship; on the other hand, forgiveness means letting go of the hurt and sadness to make room for the love and happiness again.
Every relationship is like a plant - you have to nurture it with time, communication, understanding, compassion, love. And when you’re hurt, it’s like a leaf on that plant starts to die. To keep the plant healthy, any gardener wouldn’t think twice about cutting the leaf off, so when we’re hurt, why do we try and hold onto it rather than let it go?
My mom had told me a story once about when my parents first started living together. My dad accidentally ruined her pan and she’d gotten very upset with him, so my dad had told her she had a choice: to either pick the pan or pick him, because her anger about the pan could cost her their relationship. Of course, she picked him because the pan, or the hurt she felt because of it, was not worth losing him.
For me, this week was my pan story. Maybe my anger and sadness lasted longer than hers, maybe it hurt deeper, but it comes down to the same principle: forgiveness and letting go is the only way to keep loving and to preserve the happiness you have.
Shreya
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