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    For CE: Forgive Forget

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    CoraOrmseth


    Posts : 39
    Join date : 2009-09-01

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    Post  CoraOrmseth Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:30 am

    Forgive and Forget by Tiffany Gu

    They say trust is like a new piece of paper-- white, pristine, perfect. That is, until someone breaks the pure perfection with a pen mark, a pencil skid. Just a mar, a scratch, nothing that can’t be erased or covered up with a stroke of white out. But what happens when the mark builds up? Am I supposed to give up, exasperated from trying to wipe out the imperfections and allow the marks to procreate and eventually hide each other? Or do I frantically try to exorcise them from my trust paper? There’s only so much that can roll over the blemishes before the masses of too-white tape are even more of a distraction than the original scrapes. And what happens, when someone rips the paper? Am I just going to never ever trust anyone ever again? Or would it be better to painstakingly take some packaging tape and piece it all back together, the tape making the paper just that much stronger and resilient, resistant to the mark of pencil?
    They also say to forgive and forget. That forgiveness is such a great, wonderful virtue. It worked for Joseph and his rainbow coat, didn’t it? And that apparently forgetting is impossible because nothing ever leaves this fortress of human memory. Because, of course, memory is just that reliable. That’s the reason why nobody ever forgets anyone’s names or to do math homework—memory. In all seriousness, forgetting is so much easier than forgiveness. We’re taught from the beginning to apologize when you hurt somebody, and for a short while, it worked. Sorry could fix things, sorry was the panacea for wrongdoing of all sizes. But now, forgiving requires so much more than that. It requires being a bigger person, it requires being able to actually, actively do something, as opposed to just passively forgetting. Forgiveness requires having to face whatever it is that needs to be forgiven, to acknowledge it, greet it, embrace it, tell it, “you have hurt me but I’m okay with that and I am willing to let you in my life again, knowing you might do the same again.” Forgiving is just fooling yourself into thinking that things can possibly be the same again, a constant reminder of something that happened, it’s confrontation instead of just relinquishing any sort of emotional reaction. Forgiving and forgetting are two completely different things, and to lump them together one the degree of difficulty varies so intensely is just bad advice.
    To me, trust is a typewriter with one of those really long rolls of paper installed inside that goes on until forever, and life is the words on the page, constantly typed out to make sense or nonsense. Sometimes there are typos and mistakes and blemishes on trust, but compared to having to aim a little wedge of white-out and flick it over each individual offending letter, instead of having to confront and forgive every single mark, it is far easier to simply let go and forget. Easier to keep on typing, because eventually whatever happened will reside in the past, out of sight, out of mind. Easier to go with the flow, after one mistake you’ve got a mountain to fix.
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    CoraOrmseth


    Posts : 39
    Join date : 2009-09-01

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    Post  CoraOrmseth Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:32 pm

    TGu, Hana is copy-editing the hard copy Smile
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    tiffanygu


    Posts : 11
    Join date : 2009-09-13

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    Post  tiffanygu Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:21 am

    They say trust is like a new piece of paper-- white, pristine, perfect. That is, until someone breaks the pure perfection with a pen mark, a pencil skid. Just a mar, a scratch, nothing that can’t be erased or covered up with a stroke of white out. But what happens when the mark builds up? Am I supposed to give up, exasperated from trying to wipe out the imperfections and allow the marks to procreate and eventually hide each other? Or do I frantically try to exorcise them from my trust paper? There’s only so much that can roll over the blemishes before the masses of too-white tape are even more of a distraction than the original scrapes. And what happens, when someone rips the paper? Am I just going to never ever trust anyone ever again? Or would it be better to painstakingly take some packaging tape and piece it all back together, the tape making the paper just that much stronger and resilient, resistant to the mark of pencil?
    They also say to forgive and forget. That forgiveness is such a great, wonderful virtue. It worked for Joseph and his rainbow coat, didn’t it? And that apparently forgetting is just absolutely impossible because nothing ever leaves this fortress of human memory. Because, of course, memory is just that reliable. That’s the reason why nobody ever forgets anyone’s names or to do math homework—memory. Sarcasm aside, forgetting is so much easier than forgiveness. We are taught from the beginning to apologize when you hurt somebody, and for a short while, it worked. Sorry could fix things, sorry was the panacea for wrongdoing of all sizes. But now, forgiving requires so much more than that. It requires being a bigger person; it requires being able to actually, actively do something, as opposed to just passively forgetting. Forgiveness requires having to face whatever it is that needs to be forgiven, to acknowledge it, greet it, embrace it, tell it, “you have hurt me but I’m okay with that and I am willing to let you in my life again, knowing you might do the same again.” Forgiving is just fooling yourself into thinking that things can possibly be the same again, a constant reminder of something that happened, it’s confrontation instead of just relinquishing any sort of emotional reaction. Forgiving and forgetting are two completely different things, and to lump them together equal degrees of difficulty varies so intensely is just bad advice.
    To me, trust is a typewriter with one of those really long rolls of paper installed inside that goes on until forever, and life is the words on the page, constantly typed out to make sense or nonsense. Sometimes there are typos and mistakes and blemishes on trust, but compared to having to aim a little wedge of white-out and flick it over each individual offending letter, instead of having to confront and forgive every single mark, it is far easier to simply let go and forget. Easier to keep on typing, because eventually whatever happened will reside in the past, out of sight, out of mind. Easier to go with the flow, because after one mistake you’ve got a mountain to fix.

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