Dear Finished,
Thank you for sharing this C.S. Lewis quote!
As I am able, I practice forgiveness. But it is not uncommon for me to have to re-extend that forgiveness when I realize I still have lingering negative feelings. I exercise forgiveness as a progression rather than a definitive act.
What is your experience?
Warm regards,
Diligence
This quote was given to me by a friend who instinctively knew what was wrong with me before I did. I had become stuck for a number of reasons which I've listed on other threads/boards.
Forgiveness ... . That's a tricky one. I work on forgiving myself. That is who I need to focus on ... . Me. I work on understanding me.
Do I have negative emotions sometimes about my ex? Sure do. But I"m not hung up on him anylonger either.
I also have lingering negative emotions about another of other events in my life. I treat it as an echo from the past. It's not the real thing but sometimes I can still hear it. However, it is the past.
I got tired of trying to figure out what was going on in that relationship. I got tired of spinning scenario after scenario trying to understand any of it. I finally just accepted a single truth ... . I'm never going to truly understand my ex. I'm never going to understand his motivations beyond generalizations.
So, I stopped thinking of him as mentally ill. I stopped providing him any compassion in my head. I simplified it down to a single word. My ex was a JERK. Prior to his coming along if I had encountered a jerk I would have just kicked them to the curb.
But because I loved this jerk. Because he had a diagnosed mental issue. I made excuses. (there is more to it than this but i'm aiming for brevity here). I accepted his behaviors because ... . It wasn't him ... . It was the mental illness and if I truly loved him I would stick it out ... . Afterall if he had cancer, I wouldn't have run away because abandoning someone when they are legitimately ill is something bad people do ... . I'm not a bad person ... . ETC... .
What I finally realized is that his mental issues, legitimate or not, never excused his abusive behavior. They never were a reason for me to accept them. Those are his behaviors and they truly echo JERK.
So when I simplified it. He's a jerk. I just tossed the bulk of the negative emotions out of my mind. It's not my job to change a jerk. If that is how they want to act. That is their choice. But I don't have to let those behaviors in my life.
Which leads back to forgiveness. I don't see a need to forgive him. He needs to forgive himself. He has to live with his life, actions, choices and mental health issues. I don't.
But, due to my own actions in this relationship. I need to forgive myself which I work on everyday. I had gotten to a place where I couldn't move forward. I was kinda stuck. That is when a friend of mine gave me that quote.
Now, if I get upset at something i remember going through, I think about it differently. I had/have every right to be upset about being abused by someone else. If I wasn't upset by it then that would mean I don't have an accurate radar to picks up on other peoples negative actions. It means I'm vulnerable. So getting upset for me is an early warning signal that something isn't right. It means that I care about myself enough to react to bad things.
But once I stopped trying to think about things from mental health staNPDoint and just evaluated the actions as they stood ... . Those actions screamed JERK. And a jerk I know how to deal with.
One of the things that held me up on the monkey bars was trying to understand things. Trying to make sense of things. Thinking it's the mental illness and trying to understand it. Once I let that go, I was able to move onto the next monkey bar.
The only person I need to forgive in this is myself and that is a work in progress. The only person I need to understand is me. And some things in life never make sense ... . They just don't.
Glad you liked the quote
