Forgiveness and the Freedom of Letting go

I know that to hate is the option that we have when we are in pain. It seems the easiest medicine to swallow. But, what is hate?

To be fair, I want to have this hate for myself. I need to understand myself about this hate before I say something about it. So, I have these past few months to experiment with having hate towards something.

To make it interesting, I made the object of hate from something reasonable to hate. So, I chose to hate our SDM (human resource department). The reason for hating SDM is simply easy:

1. They are arrogant bitches that think we, the worker, are dispensable goods.
2. They cut down our salaries like it was nothing and lie about things.
3. They don't listen to our saying.

In the first weeks of my trying to hate them, I had difficulties. Why would we hate? Why would we bother to have one in our transient memory? Why would I hurt myself?

But, then, I related myself to other friend. Wow, the hate became easy. I guess there is a type of hate because we sympathize with the other. We hate something because of the circumstances of other. For my case, it was the gate for me to hate.

Wow, suddenly, I felt the urge to curse them. I wanted to curse the people who put them in that position. I wanted to kill their political image and made them down at the bottom. It was easy to make them crawl. With anonymity of the Internet, rumors and few real information details, we could put down some lives.... >:)

Although this hate is enjoyable, I had my productivity bar at the lowest. I didn't work well anymore. I reckoned that at the last few months, I didn't do something that I love to do: INNOVATE! All I have done was watching the clock mounted on the wall as it would go for 04:00 PM and trying to look busy.

In the past, I would never talked bad about people. Even the baddest person would have their goodness. But, in this corporal hate, it was easy to talk about SDM and their bad deed. Then, the talk spread to talk about other officials bad deeds. Then, the talk spread to the bad deeds this nation hate. Suddenly, it was natural for me to talk bad about others.

The most frightening feature of hating is that it spread to other things as well. My other life were also affected. I don't feel the excitement of making music. I don't like to have church life. I too trying to see people mistakes.

Suddenly, I had a life where I would count anything. I checked my balance, something that I never did in the past. I was getting to be a kind person that counted what were people given and they would gave back to me. Thinking that I would be a fool to be just someone that getting used by others.

I lost myself.

All of these things happened in my experiment goes into one conclusion: To hate is to have self-destruct!

I have to let go of this hate or else I would be gone.

As I thought, the hate is like using drug. It is not that the hate is something that you would let go. The sober feeling is making you feel like you are the worst person on the earth. And when you try to stop hating, just like drug addicts, you would feel something inside you rebelled against you. The urge, or feeling high, is making you can't stop.

Well, to me the healing is an easy process. Just remember what Jesus did in the Calvary and, BAM!, the hate is gone. But, that kind of defeat the process of healing because not all can relate themselves to that. Besides, I know that this is an experiment and I can zap the feeling of that because I decide to not relate myself with it.

Those two combinations are too strong and like that's the ending without any process. Just like a zombie movie and the first minute of the film, alpha zombie were killed in ground zero. The next ninety minutes the film would be romance comedy.

So, I got another route to take. The principal is the same. To have hate disappear is to forgive. But, the problem of giving forgiveness is the forgiveness itself. What kind of forgiveness?

With that question in mind, I assess the hate within me and other people hate.

#1 Hate is a shout of needing

When we in the hate state, there is this urge of making other people suffer. This is normal. We don't hate people that are stranger. We hate people that are something to us.

By understanding this, I found out that I want someone, not particularly the person I hate, to understand me. I want someone else take this pain of getting my hope crushed. I want to have someone that I can trust again.

The problem is, my self-defense system is countering the thought. That's why in my inner there is this battle that make things paradox. In a romance saying: "there is this part of me to have someone, but there is this part of me that don't want to be hurt anymore"

So, to be healed, we must stop the defensive system. The principle to stop the defensive system is to force yourself to trust.

Some realize that it's okay to be hurt. Just like start ups that would stumble on many business plan until they would have one that succeed. To have the ultimate person that you could trust is like investing your life on many person (read: business plans) until there is someone that met your demand. You would have a ROI (Return of Investment) and more.

Well, you get the idea.

#2 Hate is a failed attempt of escape

There was this plan of me and then they ruined it. I didn't want to face it. No, I choose to not to face it. It was their fault; it was their fault; indeed, that was their fault!

When we have plans that don't go accordingly, we would have our lives threatened. Our existences and their continuity would be put in question. Nobody wants that. Thus, anxiety sprouts.

When I studied Project Management, the professor said: "There is nothing certain than the uncertainty itself." Nobody would know what the future holds. That's why, the management is actually an attempt to accept what would possibly happens.

Acceptance is the key here. By acceptance our failure on relationships, trusts and any other things we can take the next step: move forward.

Like the first attempt, there is also a risk that we could get from the next attempt. But, rest assure, the failed attempts are there so that we could assess the risk and making mitigation plan.

But be careful! Don't let the mitigation plan ruins us. Plan that involve distrust would only aggravating the risk of being failed again. As we want to be trust, others also want that. By creating gap, we'll only risk the new relationship.

#All in All

Forgiveness is the path we should take to move forward. Forgiving that we don't talk about it as a burden. Forgiving means we are not encumbered again. It's not about the money amount we lost, the pain we had nor the lost we had but the smile we would have. Don't you think being happy is what the course of life should be?