Smashing Pumpkins – To Forgive [[Song//Lyrics]]

Mes apologies for having to resort to Youtube – there is a complete lack of Smashing Pumpkins on  Grooveshark for some odd reason. :s

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Anyways, the song has a point, sort of! At least, it’s relevant enough to the newsy bit that caught my eye today:

Can Forgiveness Ever be Easy?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13154300

This particular issue is a huge pot-o-message to me. First off, I do think that forgiveness is a good thing… but not cart blanc. Not in the sense that it should be an easy thing – asking for forgiveness doesn’t automatically cancel out whatever act or deed occurred to require forgiveness. Oh sure, people make legitimate mistakes all the time of all shapes and sizes that are deserving of forgiveness – because the person receiving forgiveness is genuinely contrite. Lessons are learned, the soul is grown and expanded, and the best is made of a bad. Sounds pretty Utopian, doesn’t it? *chuckles*

Of course, it rarely works like that in the real world. You get people who ‘forgive’ in such a way that you know it’s going to be used to beat someone for the rest of their lives, no matter how contrite they may or may not be. But because you (generic you, not specific you!) have deigned to forgive someone, you somehow have the moral high ground forever and a day. It takes a rather noble concept and belittle it into a game of one-upmanship – ew. But obviously, not everyone giving forgiveness is doing that, and those that do aren’t the only guilty folks in the equation by far. Too often we have all seen people pull this kind of stunt:

‘I’m having a bad day so I’m going to be mean to you so you have to put up with it/forgive me because I’m justified.’

Erm… what?! I don’t know about you folks, but when I see that sort of crap, I just kind of think that someone might’ve gone off the deep end. Forgiveness does not work that way, mes amis! Nor should it just because society is shifting in such a way that it’s easier to ‘forgive’ and just never trust that person again rather than addressing behaviors. It just breeds a lot of backstabbing, passive aggressive behavior, and other forms of oh-so-entertaining lulzdrama.

But me… I’m not sure I get any of the mess. Forgiving is, to me, letting go, and I’ve yet to figure out how to let go of things. ESPECIALLY coupled with the fact that when I give someone a second chance, they generally seem to rush to show me how unjustified that was; makes a girl kind of sour on humankind a bit. *chuckles* But still, forgiveness is good for both sides of the equation. After all, the ‘bad’ person might eventually get themselves together and justify the forgiveness. And the act of forgiveness, as said, is letting go – why let what some other idiot did to you poison you to the heart and soul?

On that last bit, I think a quote from wiki sums it up fairly well:

‘To forgive without requiring the other to change is not only self-destructive, but ensures a dysfunctional relationship will remain so by continually rewarding mistreatment.’

It’s food for thought, at least. 🙂

<3