I HATE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I FORGIVE YOU.

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” –Alexander Pope

 

Have you ever experienced heartbreak, anger, hate and love at the same time? Do you have a broken relationship that needs to be mended? Did you hurt a friend, or you were hurt by a friend? Have you been burned so bad that you vowed never to forgive, or you feel it’s better to move on from the friendship or the relationship, yet you find yourself missing the person who hurt you and you’re right back to where you began? If any or all of these have applied to you, I guess you are human after all. It’s called emotional ambivalence – emotions co-exist together rather than substitute each other. This should be a standard test of humanity, unfortunately science does not rely on feelings but on facts. In fact, science would refer to all these experiences as insanity since it is not supported by facts.

 

I think it’s hard to give up on someone, especially if you have shared good times together, but should there be boundaries? How, when, and where exactly do you draw the line? Are there written and unwritten rules of relationships? Do you forgive, but keep your distance to avoid being burned again? Especially if it was a brutal case of betrayal and you don’t trust the person anymore. If I’m being honest, we have all let someone down in some way. Someone else feels about us, the exact same way we feel about someone who has also hurt us. As far as I’m concerned, life is a cycle. It never ends. There is absolutely nothing new under the sun, but we can only strive to be better versions of who we were yesterday. We are human and that is exactly what it is.

I was prompted to write this piece because I took a trip down memory lane to examine my ‘broken’ friendships/relationships and analyzed the reason why they ended. For the most part, it was mostly betrayal and lack of trust that made me cut ties. Looking back, I realized that I had a sense of entitlement. I put people I care about on a pedestal, forgetting they are human and expecting them to be perfect all the time, and when the human side reveals itself, I cut ties – because I never included an exception of “people messing up” in my “ friendship/relationship book”. I’m not speaking for everyone, but I think most of us reason this way. We expect loyalty, love, care, attention and all these nice gestures from our friends and loved ones, but we barely leave room for them to fail. And WHEN they do fail, we feel a sense of betrayal and we feel wronged because we expected so much more. There’s noting wrong with having a standard but how many times have other people expected so much more from us and we failed to meet their expectations? Does that mean we love them less? Does that mean we do not care? Does this mean we don’t deserve a second chance? Maybe even a third?  I guess not, because after all, we are only HUMAN. The phrase “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” holds true!

We need to practice self-introspection, allow others to make mistakes and FORGIVE! FORGIVE! FORGIVE! Luke 17:3-4 says: So, watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”

I’m still learning, and I hope you are too. Love makes everything better.

 

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