High thoughts on hurt and regret

It's funny how hard it is to forgive others (or yourself) sometimes. Especially difficult if you enjoy or care for the person you hurt or were hurt by. Not comical funny...rather "happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement" funny. This is better known as the very definition of ironic.

You'd think it'd be easier to forgive yourself. After all...you love yourself right? What about someone you love, or loved, or you know...just a friend? Shouldn't it be easier to forgive our dears (friends, family, and lovers) than it sometimes can be?

I've contemplated these things high and would enjoy the opportunity talk about the dots and connect them for you, much as I have for myself.

Regret and Hurt

Someone once told me that regret is the irrational hope for a better past. Deep words with a lot of truth. Thinking about this high after some other thoughts recently.... hurt can be as well. Hurt or, more specifically, pain related to the past actions of someone else. Whether it's hurt or regret, you're still hoping for a better past. In one case from yourself, in another case from someone else. The kicker is that sometimes a part of you hopes for both.

Someone else stopped me when I said I wish I did blank more. He stopped and told me that a part of me didn't, that when you're saying yes to one thing you're also saying no to something else and that the things I'd chose to do instead may have been something I needed at the time. They were certainly what I valued most at the time in a certain light, so why should I regret not doing something else?

There's only so far that argument can go, but it stirs the mind to contemplate your own past motivations and needs. From that contemplation comes understanding, from that understanding comes compassion, and from that compassion comes forgiveness. If you can forgive yourself, from a place of understanding and love, the regret is gone. If you can truly forgive others from a place of understanding and love, the hurt is gone. How did I link understanding to love and love to to forgiveness in my high moment? Other quotes.

Understanding and Love

Something I read once forever linked understanding and love (unconditional love being compassion) in my mind. It's a line from one of my favorite Science Fiction books of all time "Ender's Game."

He says, "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

In that scene Ender is explaining to his sister why it hurts so much to destroy his opponents, to do what he's done, why it hurts him. Another lesson on regret and war in there, possibly PTSD and other stuff as well. There's a reason it's one of my favorite books. Anyway.

Knowing something makes it less scary, less of some mystical outside force and more of something with relatable motivations, needs, beliefs, and fears. There's a reason ignorance and hate go together: fear of the unknown. It's even bigger than that though.

How can you love someone as yourself or value their wants and needs as much as your own, if you don't know someone as well as yourself or know their needs and wants as well as your own? Understanding and empathy breed compassion.

Love and Forgiveness

As the line from "A love story" by Erich Segal goes, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Without all the backstory from this famous, bestselling, 70s novel, the line basically points out that if the other person loves you, they already forgive you. It might be a nice gesture to say you're sorry, but you don't have to...in fact why don't we just move right past that regret and get back to loving each other? That's how it came across from the character who was saying it. It almost seemed to read: "Shutup and let's get back to loving each other already."

Another illustration of this was a line I heard from a friend Olivia, whom I met at Rainbow Gathering this year. She'd always say "silly not sorry" when people said sorry. It made me laugh because it reminded me of the line from "A love story." Except hers seemed to say "Can't we move past that shit and laugh about it already?" Like life was too short to always be living in sorrow and regret.

Both these ways of responding to the phrase "I'm sorry" had one thing in common though: they were loving and showed compassion. Both phrases immediately took the conversation out of a place of sorrow, hurt, or regret and placed it neatly into a place of love. It takes love/compassion to forgive someone.

(I use the words compassion and love interchangeably because of the tattoo I have on my arm that says "Love never fails." This phrase, from 1 Corinthians 13:8, was originally written in Greek to Greeks in Corinth. Instead of one silly word for affection and love, they have five. This one used here is "agape" (pronounced uh-gaw-pay). It's been described as unconditional love, but when in my Persian Bible (I was a Persian linguist once, still speak a bit) they used the word مبحت which means "compassion." This is how I come to use the terms "compassion" and "unconditional love" interchangeably.)

Forgiveness and Healing Hurt/Regret

So this is where we come to the forgiveness part. They say forgiving yourself is the road to releasing regret. It makes sense that forgiving someone else is the road to releasing hurt. I've found personally, on the road to moving past an ex I have a lighter from that says "Grow old with me Aaron," that understanding her needs and what she was going through (while contemplating this on shrooms) has been the only way I've come closer to forgiving and loving her after all the pain a year and a half of bullshit has been.

Ditto toward myself, beating myself up for not doing better or more. BUT...contemplating the decisions before me and her at the time, understanding our needs and motivations, and extending the compassion and love I've professed to have for her...it's been helping me forgive her and heal that hurt and regret in my life.

How exactly does forgiveness heal hurt or regret faster? When you're hurt and still feeling the pain from that hurt...you're holding on to that hurt. When you regret something and you still feel pain from the regret, you're holding on that regret. If you could just let go of your hurt or regret they might be gone right? You wouldn't be keeping them close to cause you pain? And what is forgiveness but letting go?

I'll say that again: what is forgiveness but letting go?

So to re-iterate:

Contemplating to try to understand past needs, emotions, and motivations
Extending compassion based on that understanding
Using that compassion/love to forgive
That forgiveness to let go of your hurt/regret.

One time fast:

Contemplating, understanding, love, forgiveness...which leads to faster healing of that hurt/regret. Bam.

...now if I could just live by my own advice/high epiphanies