My twenties have been a wild coupling of experiences. Within these past twenty-four hours of writing this piece, one of my closest childhood friends and her boyfriend brought in a new life to our world–and one woman I knew more than most, left us.
While some of us may have spent our twenty-first year in a drunken stupor, however metaphorical or literal it may have been, these sobering events personify the lessons we still learn through life.
While loss is a concept I am too familiar with, it never gets any easier when life presents a tragedy like this.
Without fail, loss brings me back around from all the distractions in life. It reels you into the core of your humanity.
Suddenly, there is a clarity among the emotional chaos. What is important to you manages to surface in response to the realities you cannot change.
Everyone faces loss at some point and to some degree.
For me this really brought around an answer to a thought I had last week.
Last week’s column, I originally tried to write about forgiveness. I spent hours researching and talking at length with several people about the nature of it all.
I had thousands of words in drafts that couldn’t articulate what my feelings were.
What it boiled down to is that forgiveness, really, is a type of loss. For many, it’s a belief system or a part of their own faith.
To some it’s an action; to not care or allow yourself to be angry at someone or something that has already affected your life.
It can even be a cultural expectation or value.
Forgiveness, to me, is some amalgam of that all. It’s certainly a struggle, but while I may have trouble forgiving some events in my past, with time I have grown to experience forgiveness for others.
I think I may forgive because I lose more should I not give up that anger. I had to experience that. I really have sacrificed much to hold on to strong feelings about my past.
Even if you can’t completely forgive something or someone, it feels more peaceful when you understand why you’re working toward that.
You’re losing that anger. It’s a loss.
That anger holds power and can serve some purposes–but you’re giving it up. You’re exchanging that feeling for the benefits of understanding and peacefulness.
The power of that exchange is one that can serve you better in most cases.
I’m certainly no perfect person. My lack of ability to grasp forgiveness has been one of my greatest faults for a long time.
That began to change a few years ago. I started to process the residual elements of the losses I experienced. I still clung to them.
When you experience many great losses at once or within short time periods, it can build to the point that it’s unable to be taken in. I just tried to keep my head above water.
However, the more I kicked and struggled against the tides, the more I resented them. The anger kept my legs kicking and my head bobbing through the waves, but I no longer saw the shore.
Forgiveness can show you that shoreline you may never have believed you could reach, remind you of the sky after the storm and of the beauty of calm waters.
It can remind you that you loved to swim before you had to. When you’re ready, forgiveness can let you test the waters again.
If you struggle with forgiveness like I do, don’t feel alone and please don’t feel hopeless. It’s a process. There are many steps that different individuals go through at different times in life. It’s not a race.
I’ve come remarkably closer to a peacefulness that I had never imagined I could ever arrive at. You lose and lose, sometimes in life. You do your best, but it just doesn’t cut it. That’s how our world turns.
While most people would never have imagined this woman who passed and I knew so much about each other, we did.
She was very receptive and open to someone who she had hardly just met. I will never forget when she finally cracked a smile during a tumultuous time for the both of us.
Having someone like her in my life, even briefly, gave me a glimmer of the kindness that was still out there and still possible. I will remember her gift.
Barton Kleen
Executive Editor