kind promise: I will forgive with wild abandon.
I want to come each moment with my hands empty and my heart open.
Instead, I often approach with caution. I carry expectations about how things are going to be, about how things ought to be. I decide in advance what’s good and bad, and bring all of that baggage into the moment.
It’s all stories I am making up to try to control the uncontrollable.
As long as I am hanging on to my vision of what ought to be, I don’t see and appreciate what is. I think I’m looking out at the world when, really, I am looking in a mirror.
For this, I ask forgiveness from myself and from the others I box in with expectations.
Forgiveness is that puff of air I use to blow away my mind chatter to give myself – give us all – a fresh start.
If I forgive you, then perhaps I can bask in who you really are instead of measuring the distance between who I think you ought to be and what I am experiencing right now.
If I forgive myself, then perhaps I can stop criticizing and second-guessing who I am in the world.
If I forgive this moment, then perhaps it can open before me because I’m not pinching it down, trying to mold it to my will. There is an image: I want to let this moment rise up like dough.
Forgiveness is letting this moment rise up.