The Benefits of Forgiving

This slight departure from our series is well worth making.

Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.
(Landrum Bolling)

" Consistently happy people are either in one of two conditions. Either no one has ever wronged or slighted them in any way. Or else they have forgiven those who have. Since it is almost impossible not to have been wronged or slighted, if you want to master happiness, you need to learn how to forgive.

Forgiving is like floating on water. You don't need to do anything. You just need to let go. When you were a young child of five or six, you became angry at your brothers, sisters, friends, and classmates. You might have even said, "I won't forgive you." Now when you look back at the vast majority of those situations, you will see that they were trivial.

It is, at present, easy for you to forgive someone for not giving you a bite of their ice cream, not letting you play with their toys, or grabbing your ice cream or toys.

Just as you have already forgiven them, you will be able to forgive others for more recent events when you realize that most things are trivial when compared to your emotional and spiritual well-being.

We all need our Creator's forgiveness. By forgiving others, we elevate ourselves and render ourselves more worthy of being forgiven. When you find it difficult to forgive, pray with your own words for the strength to forgive."

By Dr. Yehuda Lave.

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Monday, April 16: A sad Post Scriptum...

Starting at 7:00 A.M. this morning...then, restarted and horrifically concluded a couple of hours later, the shocking news has filled the media all day long...

What will go down as "the worst school campus gun violence massacre in U.S. History" occurred today at the heretofore "safe, serene" Virginia Tech.'s Engineering School.

A college age young shooter, armed with two guns and multiple 15-rounds clips opened fire and didn't stop until 33 students, faculty members and himself were slaughtered, and 29 injured...presently hospitalized or undergoing surgey. Not to make light of this infamous feat, nor to depress you by the following, it sends shivers down my spine to realize that these numbers pale compared to Iraq's daily inhuman suicide bomber-caused carnages.

"Our" mass murderer was not an Islamic terrorist, just a 23-year-old disgruntled Korean-born sociopathic college senior, Cho Seung Hui, an angry, confused, disturbed loner who "flipped out", cracking under the yoke of his own ongoing aberrant self-talk.

Eerily enough, today is also the sad Memorial of the Holocaust, respected by Jews around the World. One of the Virginia Tech. assassin's victims was a Roumanian Jew and Holocaust survivor, Professor Liviu Librescu, who chose the College town for its peacefulness!

NBC-TV just aired a Special hour-long report with Anne Curry and Bryan Willams interviewing surviving students still in a state of shock...and compared today's nightmare with that of the Columbine School massacre of just a few years ago.

One of their surviving students ("Craig"), now 24, vividly recalled the fright of crouching on the Library floor as bullets flew...hearing the agonizing moans and painful breething of the wounded and dying...amongst whom was his sister Rachel...

His advanced case of "Post Traumatic Syndrome" disorders caused him severe angers, outbursts, guilt, nightmares, fears, auditory and visual flashbacks for a couple of years.

One of the exercises he was given to practice in Therapy was "Forgiveness"...By doing this, he "began to feel tremendous relief" from all his problems.

The biggest revelation was the realization that "Forgiveness is like setting free a prisoner...then realizing that the prisoner was you..."

My deepest thoughts of sympathy, support and healing go to the innocent victims of this cataclism and their families.

And now, back to a cherrier topic and mood: Happy Bastille Day! (Just as, on St. Patrick's Day, "everyone is Irish"---Today, French!) :o)

Jacques