Forgiveness

Sorry I have not been updating my blog the way I should have…mainly b/c I ran into writer’s block, I really did not have too many topics that really peaked my interest. Until last night, I was talking to one of my boys, and he said I should write about forgiveness. When he said it, I was like dayum, why didn’t I think of that. We all deal with forgiveness on both ends; either we are the ones asking for it, or the one deciding to dole it out. But do you forgive and forget and how many times do you forgive someone before you stop? All faiths promote the idea of forgiveness and how it is essential to spiritual enlightenment, partly because forgiving someone means that you recognize the good and the human fallibility of that person and love them not in spite of but because of. But like most things in life, it is much easier said than done. Take the instance of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, family members of his alleged victims were not proponents of forgiving him and sparing his life. No, in fact they wanted to watch him die. I cannot pass judgment on anyone in that circumstance because I thankfully have never been put in such an extreme case, where I have had to forgive someone in such an extreme case.
In fact, I am not the best at forgiving at all; I am known to keep a grudge. There are people who have done me dirty who I still don’t mess with or talk to. An example of this would be the situation with one of my prophyte, to this day many people probably even him do not know why I cut off all communication with him. It is because of the following, granted every story has two sides and this is mine, and he is more than entitled to have his own view of the situation: The summer before I started my process, I was talking to this guy I met online I’ll refer to his as Dreaded, and we talked. He always invited me over to his place, on Capitol Hill, and kept telling him that it was unfair for me to travel all that way via public transportation when he could come over to me w/ his own car and it is quicker. Well needless to say we keep in contact, and he and I keep talking. I think he was the only person who I was talking to once a month while going through my process. Dreaded would just give me words of encouragement & seemed sympathetic to my plight as he is a Nupe. So then I cross, I invite him to my probate but they don’t show I mean I gave them 12 hour notice so I don’t blame them. So fast forward to March and I go out with my prophyte to the Delta, by this time my prophyte and I are pretty tight. But guess who I see randomly at the club….Dreaded. So I go over and speak and we talk and chill the whole night, and decide to hang out. Then after the club closes, back then I would say till the end b/c that’s what my ride wanted to do, I talk to my prophyte about what happened and how great it was. So then Dreaded and I start to hang out and get to know each other, but at the same time, prophyte goes after Dreaded unbeknownst to me. So all the while I’m talking to my prophyte about Dreaded, he’s trying to get with him. Then one day my prophyte who I was staying with, is all excited about this date he’s going on but he keeps avoiding the question with whom this date was with. Well come to find out, he was an overnight date with Dreaded, granted I did not have any claim on him as far as this was my man or anything but I was talking to him, and what type of friend tries to sleep with someone you’re talking to…at the same time. So after that I was done…I packed my –ish, got my front door to drive me to my apartment and cut off all contact with both. Then came the apologies from my prophyte saying that they didn’t realize it was that serious, etc, etc. So after about 2 months, my prophyte and I become cool again, until he does almost the same thing again! Now, with that, is it my obligation to forgive, and does forgiving entail forgetting as well. Also what about the old adage “Fool me once same on you, fool me twice same on me”?

How many times do you forgive someone for the same behavior or a pattern of behavior? Do we really forgive and forget, when I forgave my prophyte I never did forget it was always in the back of my mind when we went out someplace or met some people. It got to the point where I only told him about people who I wasn’t really feeling so that way if he did go after any of them it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. So does that say I forgave him completely the first time?


Just my thoughts….