Good Morning! Forgiveness?

Forgiveness feels like______? What? Letting someone off the hook for what they have done! Well, there is more ways to think about what forgiveness is! And these ways may help! It is up to you. No one else can give us the happiness we desire. And it seems forgiveness is a part of that journey!

In earlier blogs, I mention the movie I watched, Happiness For No reason. This resonated with me. So I am sharing its title and the thoughts it has generated because I am feeling very happy despite what is happening in the world around me! I love it!

There is a book and workbook you can purchase from Amazon. One thing that interested me about the downloadable workbook is that there were questions you could answer for self-examination. The results included what happens with the mind and body and what chemicals are produced by the body/the mind sending that information is included as a likelihood. In other words, we can help ourselves! It may simply be more sunshine! Or a food that will help the body. The point is there are some directions we can empower ourselves with. Food is key to a healthy body and mind. Worthwhile looking at this too! Exercise also even if it’s chair exercise! Our brains and bodies respond. Science has learned so much about what happens, but we don’t know things unless we do some research. This kind of self-research is important.

In the movie, Happiness For No Reason you will hear a gentleman named Dr. Fred Luskin speak about forgiveness. I was impressed. I have seen him before in other programs. He wrote the book Forgiveness for Good. The things he has said make sense to me. Maybe they will you. For example, Luskin writes “The thinking process that leads to the grievance is the process of trying to enforce unenforceable rules and how you create them.” I thought about this, and “Yes!” I can call my feeling my rules. He continues, “To better understand unenforceable rules, imagine an industrious police officer whose job is to patrol a busy stretch of interstate highway. Sitting in his car, the officer notes a late-model BMW at eighty-five miles per hour. He begins to start his car. His engine, however, will not turn over. It sputters but does not catch. Stuck and unable to move, the officer soon notices another car speeding by. Then another. Wondering what to do, he gets mad at first and then feels helpless. Questions go go through his mind: “Do I write out a ticket for each car, or do I let them go by? If I write out tickets, what do I do with them since I can’t issue them? What do about the cars that continue to speed by? Stopping speeders is the police officer’s job. He is faced with the predicament of having rule to enforce but no ability to do so. What does he do with his unenforceable rules? The officer is faced with a worse predicament if a car whizzes by at ninety miles an hour and the driver appears drunk. The officer sees the driver not just speeding but putting other drivers at risk. The officer faces a crisis if he sees a drunk driver speeding by who causes a hit-and-run accident. The officer is still stuck and helpless to intervene. The squad car still does not work, and he cannot do his job. The officer is faced with the predicament of trying to enforce rules that at the moment are unenforceable. The question the officer ponders is the one you deal with every time one of your unenforceable rules is broken. The question you confront is, Do I continue to write tickets that I can not serve? Like the police officer, you are often faced with situations where you have to figure out what to do when you have no control over the situation.” This made sense the more I rattled in around. It took me years to realize I had no control over what had hurt me, what I kept alive, and what made me so unhappy!

I am glad to find books, and see movies that help me look at things in new ways.

Best wishes! Pejj