Preventing Exploding Aneurysms – Letting It Go! | Being The Hero

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Preventing Exploding Aneurysms – Letting It Go!

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 Subscribe To Our Feed

As a hard working motivational speaker and parent, I often find myself having to blend work into times when I am also taking care of my child. Yesterday found me sitting in the play place of Burger King – the poor individual’s amusement park - endeavoring to summon the willpower to not eat all of my son’s chicken nuggets, observing my boy play in the larger-than-life-sized hamster wheel of germs, and at the same time my subconscious tried to work out the puzzling stink. I gain a lot of insights from these play place petri dishes. On this day I had a reminder on forgiveness.

This kid climbs up to the top and starts howling, like 80 % of the children who climb to the top of the play place and figure out they do not possess the guts to come back down. Like every other mother there, I am hoping that it is not my child – because on this day I didn’t remember to bring my “portable jaws of life”. And in my mind I see good looking firemen struggling to yank my bloated keister free from the plastic pipes. Just for the record – judging from the firemen in my family – I don’t think they can all measure up as hunky..

Momentarily my heart sinks as I hear the unique “I’m hurt” cry. Thankfully we could tell that it wasn’t a “something’s broken” cry, but rather an “I hurt myself and I need Mommy to kiss it” cry. By process of elimination we discovered which little girl it was and promptly confirmed that her mother was not going to squeeze up the plastic tube.

We sent one kid up to get her. He didn’t come back. We sent another kid up, and he got about one-third of the way to our trapped urchin before he got mesmerized by the wheel that turns the propeller on the exterior of the contraption. Because the broad shouldered boys had let us down, we went into a 70′s feminist chant that ginned up one of the girls to go up and get the wayward one. The girl goes directly to the top of the plastic maze and leads the “injured” child back to safety. The blubbering rescuee runs to her mother showing her the injury that no one else can see. But that’s not the end of the story. Getting one look at the little girl’s mother, it was obvious that she was not going to let this go. It started to look like an episode of Dragnet as the kid’s mother started “sweating” her for the name of the perpetrator in the incident. While the little girl anxiously wanted to go back to playing, the mother continued to grill her – pushing her to point out the junior delinquent behind the episode. I was familiar with this mother’s look. This woman wanted “justice” for the brute that traumatised her child. Somebody was going to “take a fall.” And this type of look never ends well.

As an expert of suburban snooping, I was able to determine that her daughter had not uncovered a suspect. It became apparent that this mother would root out the villain herself. Despite having no convincing evidence, the mother fell upon the normal suspect – the grubby child with the inattentive mother. The mother gave the poor dirty kid the evil eye, like she was attempting to bore a hole in the tike. It was a Lifetime movie in the making. The innocent poor kid falsely accused, pushed into a downward spiral of low self-esteem and petty crime, consequently living up to society’s expectations.

My first thought was to tell that mother to let it go, give it a rest. Her child was unhurt, and now contentedly playing. No harm, no foul. Was it really vital to pin the guilt on somebody? Did she absolutely need her pound of flesh? Didn’t she possess some forgiveness in her soul? That is when I understood how often I had fallen into the same trap. Those times when my first thought was to find somebody to blame..

Shoot, I misplace something at home, and I commence yelling “Who took it?” A water main breaks, and I’m looking for who to take to court for not being able to take a bath for a few hours. The playplace reminded me that we’ve lost our capability to forgive, but we have gotten excellent at placing blame.

I recall someone telling me about a kid calling another kid a name on the playground at school. The principal handled it. End of story. Nevertheless it wasn’t the end of the story. The mother of the kid who got called a name chose to start her own “investigation” and questioned all the other mothers about their kid’s experience with the name caller. She had meetings. She sent letters. She pressed them to take action against the name caller’s mother. It was a good old fashioned witch hunt. And these things don’t just occur on playgrounds. I have been in churches, work places, community events, committee meetings – where people are swift to find fault and judge and slow to forgive. And even slower to forget. Where accepting responsibility is no longer sufficient – we insist on payback – oftentimes for something that was not even done to us in the first place.

In case you haven’t realized, people make mistakes – a lot. We’re human, it’s part of our DNA to mess up. I wouldn’t be a motivational speaker if everyone were perfect! Things happen, and sometimes they aren’t anybody’s fault. We need to quit trying to make it somebody’s fault. Yes, we’re responsible for our choices and our actions. Yes, we are accountable for our slipups and should own up to them and take responsibility. But we are also accountable to forgive – not to judge – but to forgive – and then let it go. Quit hunting for someone to pay. Quit letting yourself be consumed with bitterness and a desire for vengeance. Don’t blame the car maker simply because the driver was culpable. You do not owe me due to the fact your coffee was hot and you didn’t warn me. If you come to my home and the meal I cooked you was too hot, where in heck do you get off imagining I have to ante up? And often we hold grudges in cases of crimes that have no evidence to back them up – we find the suspects guilty based on gossip.

For individuals who answer to God, He’s got some seriously hard and fast rules on this one – and He even went so far as to say it a number of times. Yet many of us who answer to God are holding on to grudges like it’s the last thong left on the clearance rack.

But we can’t let this stuff go or it will occur again, some say. We can’t let drunk drivers get off easy – we can’t let another car be sold with poor breaks. I agree, sometimes we have to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. This falls into making somebody accountable for their actions. This has little related to forgiveness. People can and ought to answer for the decisions they make in life. I’m suggesting to you they have to be forgiven. Forgiveness doesn’t signify you like what they did or agree of their actions. It simply indicates that you will forgive them for having made the mistake.

But a few things are not forgivable. Fine. I’ll grant you that. Ten percent of you out there are dealing with things that could be perceived as unforgivable – the remainder of you aren’t. It is the rest of you I’m speaking to.

So how do we do it? How do we perform the lost art of forgiveness?

If it didn’t involve you specifically, drop it. Don’t engage in in the actions or the discussions surrounding them. Simply say to that person desperate to get you taking part, “I am sorry. I wasn’t there so I will abstain from commenting. It is actually not any of my business.”

Don’t throw every perceived offense in the face of the “perpetrator”. Learn to forgive them in your heart and move ahead. Use a bit of judgment and decide what is really important.

Don’t judge. You simply don’t have the right. We all fall short. We all make blunders and bad choices. If you answer to God, then you already know that each and every sin is equal and you are every bit as guilty as they are. Judgment is not your duty or entitlement.

Don’t meet out justice. Again, it’s beyond your paygrade.

Let gossip end with you. It’s easy. Don’t answer the email. Don’t pass it on. Don’t jump on the phone and spread the news. Don’t bring it up in passing. This is hard. Good gossip is more difficult to hold in than a poot. But do it nonetheless.

If you are specifically engaged in the episode, deal specifically with the folks caught up and manage the situation like an adult.

Not everyone is going to live up to your standards. Let it go.

Take just a moment to look at things from where they sit.

Vicious and stupid people are all around us. You can’t control them, so give up trying. You will get more out of forgiveness than they will. Don’t let your bitterness ruin you.

There is not necessarily someone or somebody to blame in every case. Accidents happen. Don’t blame the bike company because you were imbibing when you rode the bike.

Keep love in your heart and on your mind, and soon you’ll discover yourself taking a different mindset with the majority of situations.

These aren’t uncomplicated things to do. You cannot simply say you are going to forgive people. You have to consistently work at it. But it’s worth the cost. It makes the planet a better place. And in addition, at some point, the mistake will be yours, and it will be you seeking forgiveness.

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