I find it really hard to hold a grudge. I can have very good reasons to want to keep holding a grudge against a person that hurt me, but eventually, after a while, I find I don’t have it in me.
I’m lucky, though. I’ve been hurt deeply (no that is not the lucky bit), but I’ve not been betrayed by anybody continuously or been cheated on or (to my knowledge) have had anybody be really nasty behind my back.
My trust and friendship have been betrayed in the past, even to a point where I ended the friendship instantly and never spoke to the person again. That happened twice, maybe three times (I can only recall two instances off the top of my head, which goes to show that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me often).
I’ve had fights in the past and have fallen out with someone close to me, but never to a point where I didn’t want to patch things up again or was happy to “forgive” someone and move on.
I put forgive in quotation marks here, because it seems too big a word or possibly to big-headed a thing to do. Yes, one forgives and moves on, but the act of forgiving strikes me as something one is either capable of and just does, or one is incapable of and pretends to do in which case it sounds insincere.
I just do it and don’t want to go on about it or feel like I’m the bigger person here, because I’m not. I just don’t want to hold a grudge.
I do wonder, though, how this sort of thing happens to others. How do people fall out irredeemably? Why do people betray each other’s friendships and trust? How do you end up hating someone, whom you loved previously or at least cared about a great deal?
If it were such a simple thing of people, friends, just choosing different paths and moving off in different directions, well, that sort of thing happens all the time. But that’s not what I’m talking about. It’d be a lot easier, if that were the case, less hurt and less damage to ones capability of trusting others.
Do we just make it complicated, because that’s what humans do? Why do we hurt each other, sometimes so badly and in such malicious ways that it’s hard to recover from?
If something never happened to you, you’ll find it hard to understand how it can happen to someone else. Especially bad stuff. You have a hard time comprehending how such a thing is possible.
As I said before, we each live in our universes, on our own islands. Intrusion is a rare thing and generally brief. But however brief it may be, it makes up in intensity.
I tend to think of myself as lucky. I don’t know where my luck is coming from, and I sure as hell never take it for granted, but I am lucky. My world is more sheltered than that of many, many others.
How is that? Is it really just plain luck, does such a thing truly exist? Did I just make the right kind of choices? What is “right” then, though?
Will my luck hold? That, too, is a question that crops up every now and then. If you don’t want to call it luck, then what else could you call it?
Is it, maybe, just my attitude to life in general?
I consider it a gift.
It’s one of the many reasons I don’t hold grudges. Tempus fugit. I can’t waste time on negativity. It’s not good for me and counterproductive to anything I want to do with my life.
Do I get angry? You betcha! Annoyed? Frustrated? Anxious? Lonely?
Sure, all of the above. But rarely. I am content most of the time, joyful at other times, genuinely happy, too. I choose positivity.
I’m making peace. For myself, with others, with everything that is inevitable. I accept that I can always choose one way or another and that my current status quo is based entirely on all the previous choices I made.
But of course, there are many things that we can’t influence and that simply happen to us, because that, too, is part of life in this particular universe.
That is what I make peace with.
Because it is still my choice how to react to any of the things happening to me. I’ve suffered loss, I had my heart broken, I’ve been in financial debt before, and I struggled to figure out how to continue when all odds seemed to be against me. I’ve been through a major earth quake, which was a very scary thing indeed.
I’ve been in quite a bit of physical pain at various times in my life as well, either due to injury or illness.
But here I am marveling at life, the universe and everything, not holding grudges at those, who caused me pain, running from safety, because I don’t need it, overjoyed at the feeling of being alive, never forgetting how truly lucky I am.
It would seem that I never suffered a nasty incursion on my little universe. I am ever so grateful for that, but whatever struggle I’ve been through, my positivity, my strength have never truly been tested. Unless I am completely oblivious to the dangers I have moved through.
Well, I’ve travelled through some countries entirely by myself. Trusting my instincts I also always moved a little quicker anytime I didn’t feel entirely safe. I am not a fool.
It’s not accurate to call me brave. I’ve not really done anything I would consider brave. Not even travelling around the world, leaving my home and my safety net behind and just sauntering across continents.
I was merely following my dreams.
I suppose, it takes guts to follow ones dreams, though, because most people don’t. They don’t chase their dreams, because they don’t have the guts to try.
I’m not afraid to fail. But then I also don’t consider failure an option.
At the end of the day I have found that you can’t measure yourself against somebody else. You can’t measure your live against that of another. Not even if you have an identical twin that has never left your side.
I’m brave in somebody’s eye, who’s never dared to follow their heart. I’m strong in somebody’s eye, who’s thinking of themselves as weak. I’m fearless compared to someone, who doesn’t know how to make a choice.
I’m tall against someone, who’s shorter than me, and short against someone taller. I’m gay to someone, who’s straight, but those who’re also gay wouldn’t care either way for a second.
But someone, who’s been through hell and back wouldn’t consider me particularly brave or strong, because I never had to face hell. Someone, who’s fulfilled every single one of their dreams will encourage me to keep following mine, but may even be envious that I still have some.
Everyone in charge of their choices would never consider me anything special.
My life is mine and can’t be measured or compared to another. Neither can yours. Envy and jealousy of someone else’s life are thus completely and utterly pointless.
You’re going to have to make your peace with that, and you will once you come to the same realization.
Everything I write in this blog concerns my life, my person, my observations and feelings. Some of it you’ll never get, some of it may strike a chord or nerve with you. If you take anything from it, it will be yours to take and you can make of it whatever you wish. I can’t preach and dare not try to teach.
I’m just putting my thoughts and feelings out there for your consideration or not.
I’m just happy that I am in a position to write, live my life the way I choose to and share my joy.
But what you make of any of it, I couldn’t even begin to guess.
LLAP
2clouds 