I have often thought about forgiveness.
It’s something we teach children from a young age – how to say sorry, and how to accept an apology. But we also teach children, or I do anyway, that saying sorry doesn’t fix things. The analogy of the broken pot is a good one. You can glue it together after you’ve smashed it, and apologise to it, but it’s still damaged and scarred. Accepting apologies is hard sometimes. Have you watched children being made to accept the apology of someone who hurt them? And they hang on to that hurt, bring it up again. My mother used to call it flogging dead horses. When you’re young it is hard to learn to let the dead horses lie, to truly forgive someone and accept their apology, I’d argue that as adults it’s important that we do this. Even to learn to forgive someone who never apologises.
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“Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings” – Bram Stoker.
Have you ever experienced that awful feeling that someone, somewhere, is going to discover that you aren’t as smart/talented/employable/beautiful/brilliant as everyone seems to think? It’s an insidious thing and slides beneath the praise and recognition to cut doubt into your mind: ‘they’re so kind to say that, but it isn’t true – what if they find out that I suck?’
Clementine Fraser - Author 