Compassion

The above picture has the words to the very tough lesson I am learning right now. It is so easy to get caught up in petty arguments with people and to hold grudges that you forget what it is really important in life. You forget that we live in a beautiful place full of broken people. People that are trying to get by in this crazy life. People with mothers and fathers, children, pets, and friends just like you and me. People with money issues...family drama...long hours at work. People with their own set of pains and hurts and sorrows. 

I have started something new within myself in the past couple of weeks. I am really trying to let go of past wrongs and to forgive and forget. I am trying to rebuild relationships that I thought were lost and to root new ones in love. Let go of grudges and hurt that I have felt and embrace the present moment.

A couple of weeks ago the world slapped me hard in the face with something I had been holding on to. By holding onto my hurt I had hurt someone else.  I was raised to feel compassion and all my life I have felt it very deeply. And in that moment when I had seen what my refusal to let go had done, I knew I never wanted to make anyone feel that way again regardless of what they had done to me. 

However, how do you walk that road of being soft without also being a pushover? I have come to the conclusion that it is possible. If someone wrongs me I have within me the power to address it with them and then to let it go. What they do with it is out of my control. For me, and for my life, it is healthier for me to let it go that to hold on to hate and anger and to let "the world make me hard."  

I don't want there to ever be tension between myself and someone else. I want to leave this world some day leaving only love and happiness where I've been. In order to do that, I need to change my heart and strive to be soft. Because, really, life is too short for hate. Don't you think?