Forgive and Forget

Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi

What does that mean to you?
There are many ways to describe or translate that phrase.  One Biblical way to describe it, would be to say that yes, you are your brother's keeper.  What does this mean to you?

Aloha Kekahi i Kekahi
 It does mean to forgive & forget, but let's really look at what that means:  To forgive & forget means to let go of certain things so that you are able to move on with greater things in life. 

 Understand that you are letting go because you cannot change what already happened.  The pain happened once and it is not healthy for you to live it over & over again. 

Understand that the forget part does not mean you pretend it never happened.  It simply means that you don't bring it up constantly and that you don't dwell on it.  This too, prevents you from living the trauma of the experience over and over again.  No need, once hurt enough.

After a bad experience, you are faced with a number of choices concerning your future.  You can twist as many choices into this part, if you like being confused, but for the most part, you will either walk away or you will forgive and forget.  Anything outside of these two choices will likely cost you more damage.  Think about that right now.  Use the first situation that comes to mind.  No matter how you plan any other option in your head, you can easily come out with more problems, a higher cost, more work, more of something you don't care to deal with.  Now look at the 2 choices I gave you.  It really does boil down to this, doesn't it?  

No matter which you choose, your feelings still have to be dealt with, you only handled your choice.  Now about your feelings.  Even if you love someone enough to forgive and forget, you will have to get rid of the bad feelings before you let go.  What do you do?

Once again, you have a million ways you could handle stuff, so lets go through elimination of the bad ones, to see what choices are left.  

Choices like revenge aren't too smart.  That shit comes back even harder than the last time you got it and it hurts.  Don't be one dummy and hurt yourself, while trying to hurt someone else! 

Overcompensating is like agreeing to mind-fuck yourself in the long run.  Then you get so caught up in your own lies to yourself, that you end up losing yourself and your relationship with the other person.

Drugs and alcohol are the worst.  Never take it there, especially when you're upset about something! That part of the addiction is the worst part! 

We need to stick with coping mechanisms.  Something that is going to put us on top of where we really want to be, in the long run.  

Where's that?  Well when I wanted to be a musician, every emotion and situation deserved a song.  Who knows? Maybe my third album would need a filler song and I could take an old song and make it new?   When I was an aspiring coffee shop owner, I crafted new lattes to go with my mood.  When I lived in the country of a cold place, I used that energy to cut future firewood and when my temper was still ugly, I used to go to the gym and box it out. But the whole point is that I found something to dig my energy into, that would be positive later.  I didn't know that would be a good thing, I was just afraid to catch dirty lickins if I got caught doing anything else lol.

After a few years in college and church, I learned that this was the best possible thing I could have done, but let the psychologist try telling you this, with their textbook words! I swear that all the textbooks in the world couldn't say this if they tried.  They make it all sound so clinical that you can't relate to it, or you walk out feeling like a diagnosed idiot of some sort.

I have been working with people of all walks of life for 30 years now, and after all the stories and patterns I watch, I know what I said above to be pretty sound.  Its not the only way, but its an effective way that we all can handle.  Malama pono, hoaloha.