Hello, September.
Surprise me.
If you don’t make peace with your past,
it will keep showing up in your present.
—Wayne Dyer
Forgive: To stop feeling angry or resentful toward
(someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
Sometimes the first step to forgiveness is
understanding the other person is a complete idiot.
—Bill Murray
You are headed into the homestretch. It is September already, you have been sticking with the ideas and challenges within this book, and we are headed toward the conclusion. Now it’s about to get real. Forgiveness is easy to talk about but one of the most difficult things to offer.
Where I live, September signals the end of summer but also new beginnings. This month is also a somber one for New Yorkers, as well as for the rest of the United States, as it is the anniversary month of the most horrific terrorist act against our country.
Healing old wounds and embarking on new beginnings is an idea that probably goes more hand-in-hand than we realize. Honestly, how can you have a new beginning as a country, or as an individual, if you don’t first heal your old wounds? You have room for only so much “stuff” in this life you lead. I truly believe that for every ounce of anger you release from your heart, you leave that space open for something better—love.
Let’s be honest, though, there are people who have hurt you. BAD. There are things that happened that this author knows nothing about. Who is she to suggest that I should simply forgive? you may be thinking. I will tell you who I am. I am someone who also has had to forgive some pretty horrendous crimes. I’ll go one step further and tell you truthfully that I am someone who has not been an angel her whole life and who, in her younger days, was at times downright mean. I am someone who needs to forgive and someone who needs forgiveness; we all do. My personal first step toward forgiveness was realizing that, in most instances, the offender was an idiot. (Yup, even when I was the offender.)
Let me break this down for you based on my own life. I had an experience in childhood where another child took advantage of my naivety and hurt me. For a very long time, I was angry—although not outwardly—deep, deep down in my soul, and I held on to that anger. As an adult I didn’t think about it, but the anger toward my perpetrator and others who I felt let it happen persisted. As a child and well into my adult life I suffered from stomach issues. I had every test known to man every five years; I was sure that we would find some structural abnormality that could be causing the distress. I never thought to tie the ailment to the incident because consciously I believed the event was barely a “blip on my radar,” or so I thought. I finally told myself, Maybe you need to address this and forgive it. He was a kid and while it doesn’t make it right you need to offer forgiveness. So I did. It wasn’t until I offered forgiveness in my heart to that person that my stomach symptoms and my life changed. Dramatically. (For a lot more on the topic of trauma and physical manifestations of pain later in life read Dr. John Sarno’s book The Mind Body Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain.)
That forgiveness took work!
What about a time when I was an idiot? When I needed forgiveness? We are lying to ourselves if we live a life believing we have never done something wrong. I mentioned earlier that I went to camp in Massachusetts. I went for years and loved it. One year, when I was twelve, a new girl came to the camp named Sally. She was the “It Girl”! Sally was from “NYC” (so she said, later I realized it was Queens and not Manhattan, big difference), her skin was a golden brown color, and her hair was black with soft, long ringlets cascading down her back. She was also really funny—pee your pants funny! When I was with her I felt such giddy happiness. There was also another girl in my cabin named Marissa. She was not pretty, was overweight, and wore polyester clothing. She was also Sally’s cousin. You might assume that Sally would be protective of her relative, but instead she teased Marissa relentlessly, and Marissa would laugh. It seemed like fun, so I joined in. I believed it was harmless, I mean Marissa was laughing right? I was young and stupid, and in retrospect I realize I was mean.
There was another girl that Sally perceived as “uncool.” Her name was Alice and Sally couldn’t stand her. I know now that this hate was purely based on jealousy, though I didn’t have the experience or maturity to understand that back then. Sally was jealous of Alice because she was pretty and kind, and because Sally had recognized that I sort of wanted to be Alice’s friend. Still, at Sally’s urging, we played camp tricks on Alice, like hiding her clothes or telling a boy that she liked them. I had thought these were harmless pranks, that is until a counselor came to the cabin and told us Alice left camp early. Thirty-five years later my behavior still haunts me. I was young, I was unsupervised, and I was simply an idiot. A big, twelve-year-old idiot. Forgiveness thirty-five years later had to come from me. I needed to forgive the unsupervised twelve-year-old idiot. I have been angry—seriously disgusted—with that twelve-year-old idiot for years. Every time I thought about my behavior I would feel physically sick. I didn’t think a public confession was necessary but perhaps it was.
I still haven’t forgiven myself fully for that, which is interesting because I could certainly have forgiven someone else more easily than myself. What can I say? I am flawed, and one of my flaws is that I don’t easily possess the ability to offer myself the forgiveness that I would easily offer another, but I am working on it.
What is forgiveness? It is the pure act of letting go of the anger. I am angry with myself for prior bad behavior. I need to get rid of that anger. We are angry with the terrorists for killing people we knew and people we didn’t. We are angry about abuses perpetrated on us in childhood by adults or by other children.
We may be angry with our parents, siblings, abusers, bullies, even angry at the disease that stole someone from us. I challenge you (and apparently me) to forgive. Together, let’s make the conscious decision today to let go of long held anger and replace it with forgiveness. Every ounce of forgiveness offered releases anger from our mind, heart, and soul and leaves room for so much more. This forgiveness thing can be hard for me. I am a grudge-carrying gal—always have been—and maybe you are, too. But recently I discovered a really important fact: forgiveness isn’t the act of letting the other person off the hook; it is the act of letting yourself off the hook.
Reflections
WHO DO YOU NEED TO FORGIVE AND FOR WHAT?
Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds. The harvest can either be flowers or weeds.
—William Wordsworth
Negativity: An attitude that is not hopeful or enthusiastic.
I often think people speak because they are afraid of silence. Sometimes (often) silence is much better than the spoken word.
Negativity is defined as an attitude that is not hopeful or enthusiastic. The definition alone should illustrate to you that you want no part of it. But often you can’t escape.
I talk about yoga a lot; I guess it’s because it is where I experience a good portion of my life. A few months back, on a snowy Tuesday, I took an amazing class that ended with a great meditation. The meditation grounded me, the yoga reminded me to breathe when feeling resistance, and I literally felt great. I rolled up my yoga mat with a peaceful ease, feeling ready to greet the day. That is until “Tank Top” (my nickname for a woman in the class who has all these cute tank tops) said, “Oh my God, this city SUCKS. I mean, seriously, I guarantee you won’t even see a plow today.”
Bam, there went my good feeling. I began thinking, Will we not be plowed out? That has happened before. This city sucks? Does it? Will I be able to get to where I need to go? Will they plow? There was only a half inch of snow on the ground, but Miss Tank Top’s negativity had me preparing for the worst. My heart rate sped up and my palms got sweaty. Tank Top had stolen my Zen—bitch! u The day ended with less than two inches of snow and everyone easily got to where they needed to go. But she had ruined my vibe with her negative, silence-filling chatter.
Fast-forward two weeks later to a different yoga class where Tank Top’s nagging voice droned, “It’s too hot in here!” Oh hell no! Do not mess with the temperature (which to me at 75 degrees was frigid). The studio used to hold 90-degree classes, yet now here she was complaining that the class listed on the schedule as “Hot Yoga” at 75 degrees was too hot? Again, I left feeling agitated.
You know these people; you may even be one of them. The people who fill silence with negativity just to be . . . interesting? Relevant? Engaging? I am not sure why people do it, but we are all guilty at one time or another. Someone tells us something and we put a negative spin on it. It becomes almost a habit. “Beautiful day out today” is met with, “Better enjoy it, gonna rain tomorrow.”
The other thing that happens with negativity is it sucks you in. Like a vacuum picking up sand off your floors! (That’s just a little reminder to myself that I need to vacuum; w) Truthfully, it is very easy to get sucked in. The woman at the yoga studio, Tank Top, wasn’t alone in her bitching. People joined in on the bitchfest: “Yeah, this city never gets it right!” “Yup, we will all be stuck!” This is what I don’t want to hear; not in the grocery store, not on the street, and definitely not after spending an hour and a half clearing my damn chakras!
Tank Top tried to engage me in her negative conversation as I was making my way out. I didn’t take the bait—she annoyed me—and wouldn’t even look up at her. That was my chosen response not necessarily because I was angry—okay, maybe I was angry—but because I believe that the less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become. Isn’t that a main goal? To live a peaceful life? If it isn’t . . . well, it should be. Still, I felt a bit mean not conversing with Tank Top, so before I left the studio I looked back and gave her a smile and said, “Enjoy your day!”
So what can we do when we are overwhelmed with exhaustive whining, complaining, and negativity? When we are met with negativity, I think we need to do our best to ignore it. In fact, let’s go a step further and rather than worrying about navigating someone else’s negativity, let’s put the focus on navigating our own. Sometimes, I find negativity slipping out of my mouth before I can stop it. I find myself filling the silence. Do you fill silence? To some extent we all do. This month, let’s work on filling silence with something positive. Have nothing positive to share? Then fill that silence with something simple. A smile.
And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.
—Shanti
Play: To engage in activity for enjoyment and
recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.
This guy I know, who I’ll call “Kevin,” is forty-eight years old and is a total “playa.” I’m giving him a pseudonym because I’m not sure he wants the world to know this, even though it’s obvious that he loves being one. The big, cocky grin on his face most days shows people that he truly digs his role. Oh, sure, it’s a bit tough for me being friends with this player, but not for reasons you may think. Honestly, it’s because I am jealous! I found myself many years back inspired by this Kevin’s mentality! Thinking that maybe, just maybe, I should become a “playa,” too.
Stay with me now. Kevin is a player. That is true. He plays volleyball, surfs, plays basketball with neighborhood kids, enters beach-wrestling contests—you name it. If there is some fun activity to join, some game to be played, Kevin is all in! I used to watch him with envy, angrily wondering: Doesn’t he have some sort of adult chore that needs to be done? A fence to be built or toilet to be fixed? His friends often say, “Kevin knows how to enjoy every moment because he is a cancer survivor.” That sounds plausible right? Except that I have known Kevin for more than twenty-five years—well before he ever faced illness, and he’s always been a player.
I have another friend—let’s call her “Jen.” Jen used to play lacrosse in college, and she was good! She missed it in her adult life, and she wanted to play again but there was no league for her to join. With no team available to join, Jen created her own and then with no league to house the team, she created that as well. Jen can now be found playing lacrosse with other women at least once a week. Why don’t more adults play like Kevin and Jen? Time is often a factor. We are parents, or we are caring for our own parents. We are business professionals or students. We are pet owners, homeowners, or home renters. We are the “uber busy” modern adult trying to do everything and be everywhere. So, yes, I would agree that finding time to play is an obstacle.
Another obstacle—maybe an even bigger one—is fear of embarrassment. Seriously, how would it look to see us chasing a kickball, playing in the waves, trying a new yoga pose, or shaking our booty in a Zumba class? But, come on, we are nine months in, we concurred that already didn’t we? We are in a better place now, right? We are no longer giving a shit what people think about us because we have learned that most of the time no one is thinking of us. So then, what is stopping you from being a “playa”?
Inspired by Kevin, a few years ago I began to incorporate play into my life. First it was sporadically and with a bit of trepidation. Now it is much more a part of my life. I am not sure what people think when they see me trying to catch waves (with or without a board), kick (or miss kicking) a kickball, or trying to obtain side crow pose in yoga. But I don’t care, because when I am playing, I am smiling—a great big smile—and when we smile, we are ageless.
George Bernard Shaw got it right some seventy years ago when he said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” If that is the case, then what are you waiting for? Fix the toilet tomorrow! Be a PLAYER! Play manhunt with your kids, kickball with your girlfriends, take a yoga class, play tag with your son, or Barbies with your daughter—or vice versa—just play! Get out there and join the other ageless adults who are playing. That’s right, join the play revolution! And then, yes, you guessed it, come right here and tell yourself about your experience.
As for me? I have to make this letter short—I gotta go find a helmet because Kevin just asked me to go skateboarding!
Reflections
HOW WILL YOU INCORPORATE
PLAY INTO YOUR LIFE?