To Err is Human. To Forgive Isn’t Always Necessary
There's a lot of baggage behind the idea of forgiveness. If you're to believe the many Oprahisms, forgiveness is universally healing. Well, that's a mile high pile of horse shit. Let the punishment fit the crime.
Granting forgiveness should only be done when the person in question is truly sorry, the wrong was done without malice, and lastly, when the offender is going to prove themselves worthy of forgiveness by striving to never commit the offense again. Truly evil acts don't deserve forgiveness. Instead of offering undeserved forgiveness, the wronged party should strive to understand what happened, mourn the loss, and commit themselves to making sure that others don't suffer from the same wrong inflicted on them.
I'm sure many of the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials begged for forgiveness as they faced justice. Of course, many would argue that they were following orders. However, participating in the systematic murdering of 7 million plus innocent men, women, and children doesn't deserve forgiveness. It deserves a noose. Forgiveness is born of compassion. Where the FUCK was the Nazis compassion when they turned on the gas chambers, opened fire on unarmed people, and stacked the bodies of human beings like cord wood in the concentration camp ovens? True compassion is saying, "No" to the command to butcher human beings. I'd rather recognize the innocent humanity of others and take a bullet than turn the knob on the gas that killed innocent people who were promised a shower. This level of evil goes beyond any reasonable expectation for forgiveness. All any victim can do is honor their dead and fight to make sure that this never happens again. One can accept reality and heal without offering forgiveness to those who don't deserve it.
My wife would say that my views on forgiveness were born from my childhood. My parents asked for forgiveness for exposing me to drugs, poverty, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. The problem is that there's always a, "But" thrown in providing them with a get out of the consequences of irresponsibility free card. Adults have a choice, children don't. My mom suffered as a child from abuse and mental illness. That didn't give her license to have children she would then neglect, fail to take care of, and expose to abuse. There is no excuse for an adult to inflict harm or allow harm to be inflicted on their children. None. So, both of my parents have been told that they're not forgiven. However, I have accepted their fatal flaws and refuse to let their failures as human beings to permanently color my life beyond my childhood. Sorry, not sorry they're not forgiven. You reap what you fucking sow. Needless to say, warm, fuzzy Hallmark moments don't happen for me and my parents.
As a substance abuse counselor I saw a lot of guys who were truly sorry and committed to leaving addiction and all the hurt that goes with it behind them. Many of these guys would achieve solid recovery. However, sometimes the damage done to their family relationships was irreparable. Changed or not, their family was done with them. Ultimately, the recovering addict's attempt to make amends didn't have to be accepted by those the addicts had wronged in their addiction. As hard as it is this was, it was a possibility they had to face. A big part of my job was helping them to see that their loved ones have the right to deal with the wounds the addict's addiction caused the best they can in the way that works for them. If that meant a forever closed door, so be it. The addict could quietly make amends by leading the best life they can in recovery while helping other addicts avoid the permanent loss of their families.
Forgiveness is a precious gift that not everyone deserves to receive. True evil is unforgivable and sometimes no amount of forgiveness can heal wounds. I would argue that we shouldn't strive to forgive everyone, just those whose actions are born of one human mistake. Even the drunk driver whose one mistake kills an innocent might be worthy of forgiveness, but it's not for them to ask for or assume that it'll be granted. All they can do is never repeat the wrong. The consequences of ignored human frailty and irresponsibility when visited on innocents who don't have a say in the matter are just as unforgivable as a cold blooded murder. In short, no one should weigh themselves down with the priestly obligation to blindly offer forgiveness for any and all sins that are confessed to them. In fact, many wrongs don't deserve forgiveness, they deserve Old Testament level wrath. Now, if I could just figure out the whole fire and brimstone thing before the next family reunion.
Way Past Forgiveness
I'll never forgive you.
And I'll never forget you, either.
I'll never accept you.
And I'll always perfect you, too.
I'll never love you again.
And I'll never leave you, either.
I'll never forgive you.
And I'll never forgo you, either.
I'll never outlive you.
And I'll never let you live without me.
I'll never withstand you.
And I'll never understand you, either.
I'll never forgive you.
And I'll never forsake you.
I'll never be low again.
And I'll never be below you then.
I'll never become you.
And I'll never ask you again.
Reflections by Still Waters
During the entire period of this flight
No one can or will
Attempt to bar entry
To her bloated tongue
That hangs
There snakelike,
Like a rope bell
From the skies...
Keep your hands inside
The moving vehicle, and
Attempt to adhere
A second pair
Of safety googles
To your face for comfort...
The Weeping Caravan is now
So devastatingly vulnerable...
See the sober groups in funeral garb...
And wouldn't you cease to know it
To avoid her morass of
Braids, and epic tangles
That continue after death...
The strangle vine beneath the
Kind caress...
She's aiming to close the door
So violently rough on you
And all that you've achieved,
Because she's cast a glaring judgement
Before the next still,
And the words her friends
Have piled high...
The pale yellow chicken clucks...
Have lastly sunken teeth...
Hello, My Dear...
Those amino acids that
Seek to invade me
Tell me that I have nothing
I should fear for your feisty
Interlopers
Dressed in earnest shades of blue,
Though you were to seem so genuine
Before you sped the tractor over all that we
Held dear, throwing a deadly final switch...
During this flight
No one can or will
Attempt to bar entry
To her bloated tongue
That hangs
There snakelike,
Like a rope bell
From the skies..
How do they aim to know?
Eyes in armor that lie behind the castle moat...
...The same one's that I return a gaze to after
Lifetimes of remote viewing...
Barely breaking a sweat before the newest force
Ensues...
The spiders pass into this realm
Unscathed,
As I convince myself that aid
Will be forthcoming...
She takes me in cold arms,
We watch the moments tick off, under
An evolution of still photographs...
I laugh afterwards in grief...
Losing light like birds in flight
Below a sunset
That has caught us groping for
Lost straws
With pants and skirt akimbo...
On the edge of skinny diving
For a mythic mountain glide...
See you at the end of night!..
Wonder if you'll nurse your presence....
'til the ponds of frogs run dry..
I forgive you for us then,
Though I remain
As much to blame if not
More so
In my delineated
Rubble of past form...
6/15/24
Bunny Villaire
Edit #5
(The photograph)The Oracle, 1949.
By John Gutmann
May we live to 103
There's a greater than zero chance he'll be shot in bed by a jealous lover.
It's a tongue in cheek toast I've heard a thousand times in a hundred different Irish pubs, and I've often thought it wouldn't be a bad way to go. As I recall, the whole saying is "May we live to be 103 and die in our sleep, shot in bed by a jealous lover." The age varies, but the spirit is the same: geriatric and still scrompin'.
He isn't geriatric, but he's sure as hell scrompin'.
I noticed he was acting suspiciously a couple of months ago. The man who didn't even have a smartphone until work made him, the man who wouldn't text if his life depended on it, was glued to his black mirror that last time I saw him.
"I think he has a girlfriend," she confided out of the blue. I don't call as often as I should, and we went from discussing what was for dinner to this bombshell. There was no preamble, no smooth segue, no transition.
"What makes you think that?" I asked, carefully neutral. I did not share my suspicions or observations. What if she's right? What if she's wrong? What if she's right and decides not to do anything about it? I know better than to disturb marital bliss. Domestic disputes often turn against those in their orbit, and I'm trying to stay unscathed.
"I found pictures and messages." Ahh. Can't argue with that. "But the next day, after I saved them, they were gone."
"Did you actually save them?"
"I don't know. My mind is gone, you know that." It's true. I do. It is. But not all of it.
"So what's your next move?"
"I confronted him about it. I asked him to please just stop and love me for the time I have left."
She has maybe three years. Probably less. Definitely less with a broken heart.
"What did he say?"
"He denied everything. Said I was delusional. And it's possible I am."
"What is your end game? Your goal?"
"I want to be loved. Cared for. I just want him to keep his promise."
I do, too. I understand she's hard to live with, God knows I don't want to live with her, but it looks like I'll have to sooner than later. She isn't the woman I once knew, but she is still the woman who has known me my whole life. We used to be friends, and I miss those days. She never stopped being the parent, but for those few years of my early adulthood, we genuinely liked each other in addition to the familial love.
I'm not sure we like each other so much anymore.
"Mom, I got you. Tell me what you need me to do."
She cries, and it's the first time I've heard her sob since her sister died. Even then, it was the loss of a sibling more than the loss of the person her sibling was that sparked her grief.
"Nothing yet. Nothing yet. Don't be angry at him, don't treat him any differently. I had to tell somebody. I'm not sure I can live through this, and I'm not sure he will, either." She takes a breath, sighs. I hear so much sadness. "If he cuts it off, I can forgive him."
I can, too. She can't hear me nod, but I assure her. "I get it. I understand, and I'm here if you need me. You have to make the choices that are best for you, and I don't judge you for them."
"I'm not ready to go yet," she says, no longer crying. "But the years ahead of me aren't looking like ones I want, anyway."
Her husband should consider staying home, or that house might become a tomb.
I hope not.
I'm not sure what's scarier: the fact that murder might happen, or the fact that I'm not horrified that it may.