11.9~"Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past"
Another day in the van. This morning we woke up in Gallup, New Mexico and started our journey to Childress, Texas. The scenery is absolutely beautiful. I've discovered New Mexico is a land of rocky, dirt covered mountains and stretches of desert fields. There are huge, rust-colored cliffs intermittently that appear so vividly against the vast baby blue sky. The SKY!!! The sky seems to go on forever, a vast expanse of nothingness and everything at the same time. I've been looking at the clouds a lot, and in some snippets of daydreams I start to feel like one. Light and fleeting, slowly floating along. Our endless driving makes me feel like I'm floating from state to state in a hazy dream, uncertain which parts of me are here to stay and which are transient.
I've obviously had a lot of time alone with my thoughts over the past two days. Usually, the slow pace of the world around me would give them permission to act up and wreak havoc. But to my surprise, my thoughts have been gentle, quiet, and honestly a bit sparse. I think for me, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish being empty from being at peace, if there is a difference between them that is. I know in Buddhism emptiness is embraced. It allows you to remove your biases and predispositions towards experiences so you can view them exactly as they are. By losing our attachments to our own stories, assumptions and views of the world we can reduce our suffering. I am constantly trying to master this art, the art of losing. It seems as though the better you are at letting go, the less painful life becomes. Or the less you suffer, at least.
Obviously pain is not ideal, but it's necessary. And it can be addicting. I think I used to rely on pain. I used to chase around painful things, or people, because hurting was the only thing I knew how to do and it was familiar. It was easier to wait around for something to hurt me than to risk trying to find something that wouldn't. I remember wallowing in it, letting it consume me. Always looking for darkness instead of light. Maybe it's because I was lazy, I didn't want to put the effort into being happy. But I think ultimately, it's because I was afraid. Scared to put my faith into something good, in fear it would be taken away. Or scared that I would discover I wasn't good enough for the good in the world. It breaks my heart a little bit to think of all the time I've spent thinking I don't deserve good things.
People wonder why I get so excited when they save me a biscuit at breakfast or give me their sweater or compliment me or tell me they love me, among millions of other things. It's because these little things prove the old darkness in me wrong. They prove to me that light is everywhere and IS very much worth looking for even if at first it hurts your unfamiliar eyes. People have hurt me in the past, I know I have done my fair share of hurting others as well. I know that this isn't over, that pain will always be a guest that comes and goes as it pleases. However, I'm learning to befriend it rather than allow it to eat me alive. I'm learning to look my pain in the eyes and say "hello, you're welcome here." To no longer carry it on my back with a DAMAGED GOODS sign on my forehead. Rather, to let it walk beside me and hold my hand. Things are never as serious as they seem.
So, people have hurt me and will hurt me and that's the nature of the world. But far more important and notable than all this hurt, people have helped save me. They've saved me through the love they've shown me and the beauty they've given me. They've saved me by forcing my heart to open even when I thought it was cemented shut.
Through this love, I have found forgiveness. Forgiveness is my all time favorite word and my all time favorite thing. Out of all the most beautiful things in this world, I think forgiveness is the most beautiful of it all. Forgiveness has given me new eyes to see with, forgiveness has helped me to release the bitterness I've held on to. Perhaps it is through this grand, endless process of release and forgiveness that I have captured some of that peace/emptiness I wrote of earlier. I like to think that through forgiveness I have been saved. And maybe, through emptiness, I am saving myself.
~V
I've obviously had a lot of time alone with my thoughts over the past two days. Usually, the slow pace of the world around me would give them permission to act up and wreak havoc. But to my surprise, my thoughts have been gentle, quiet, and honestly a bit sparse. I think for me, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish being empty from being at peace, if there is a difference between them that is. I know in Buddhism emptiness is embraced. It allows you to remove your biases and predispositions towards experiences so you can view them exactly as they are. By losing our attachments to our own stories, assumptions and views of the world we can reduce our suffering. I am constantly trying to master this art, the art of losing. It seems as though the better you are at letting go, the less painful life becomes. Or the less you suffer, at least.
Obviously pain is not ideal, but it's necessary. And it can be addicting. I think I used to rely on pain. I used to chase around painful things, or people, because hurting was the only thing I knew how to do and it was familiar. It was easier to wait around for something to hurt me than to risk trying to find something that wouldn't. I remember wallowing in it, letting it consume me. Always looking for darkness instead of light. Maybe it's because I was lazy, I didn't want to put the effort into being happy. But I think ultimately, it's because I was afraid. Scared to put my faith into something good, in fear it would be taken away. Or scared that I would discover I wasn't good enough for the good in the world. It breaks my heart a little bit to think of all the time I've spent thinking I don't deserve good things.
People wonder why I get so excited when they save me a biscuit at breakfast or give me their sweater or compliment me or tell me they love me, among millions of other things. It's because these little things prove the old darkness in me wrong. They prove to me that light is everywhere and IS very much worth looking for even if at first it hurts your unfamiliar eyes. People have hurt me in the past, I know I have done my fair share of hurting others as well. I know that this isn't over, that pain will always be a guest that comes and goes as it pleases. However, I'm learning to befriend it rather than allow it to eat me alive. I'm learning to look my pain in the eyes and say "hello, you're welcome here." To no longer carry it on my back with a DAMAGED GOODS sign on my forehead. Rather, to let it walk beside me and hold my hand. Things are never as serious as they seem.
So, people have hurt me and will hurt me and that's the nature of the world. But far more important and notable than all this hurt, people have helped save me. They've saved me through the love they've shown me and the beauty they've given me. They've saved me by forcing my heart to open even when I thought it was cemented shut.
Through this love, I have found forgiveness. Forgiveness is my all time favorite word and my all time favorite thing. Out of all the most beautiful things in this world, I think forgiveness is the most beautiful of it all. Forgiveness has given me new eyes to see with, forgiveness has helped me to release the bitterness I've held on to. Perhaps it is through this grand, endless process of release and forgiveness that I have captured some of that peace/emptiness I wrote of earlier. I like to think that through forgiveness I have been saved. And maybe, through emptiness, I am saving myself.
~V
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