The Heart of the Matter (Forgive, But Don't Forget)

The Heart of the Matter, at least according to Don Henley, is forgiveness. Of course, the hit song, according to Henley, took him 42 years to write. While clearly an exaggeration, the concept of forgiveness does take a long time to conceive. With mankind's penchant of having personal biases, the very idea of accepting faults is somewhat contrary to one's very nature.

Then again, Henley did say that the song only took 4 minutes to sing. Once arriving at the point of admission, accepting the guilt and error of one's ways, everything just seems more streamlined. The healing is easier, faster. Once done with any notion of grudges, things are more agreeable, pleasant and understandable.

Forgive and Forget. The age old adage does lend some wisdom. However, forgetting would mean being unable to learn from past mistakes and errors. There is no wisdom in refusing to learn one's letters.

To err is human, to forgive divine. Indeed, being slighted is never pleasant. Notice however that there is not mention of forgetting in this similarly overused phrase. For whatever trespasses and transgressions received, it would be safe to assume that forgiveness will eventually come. Forgetting the entirety of the situation, the sins behind it all, on the other hand, is nigh impossible.

However, the hardest person to forgive is usually one's self. The practice is commonplace, people would feel better placing blame into something or someone, the self being the most convenient culprit or scapegoat. Boyfriend cheated on you, more likely than not, it has to be your fault. Somebody dies, it's your fault, you tell yourself. Such rationalizations make no sense to the outsider, but makes a mountain of logic to the bearer. It is mankind's curse of free will and ability to empathize that allows such things, and often these people find themselves broken.

Such self-pity can be comforting really. Majority do not want to admit it but it's a just so damn easy to explain everything with inherent misfortune. Perhaps it is time that people just stop and think to themselves "Have I forgiven myself already?"

And I say to myself "Yeah, just now..."