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[av_heading heading=’Loving the unlovable’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY OSCAR CRUZ
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Thursday, February 16, 2017
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IT IS ASKING for something too demanding to comply with. It is not simply challenging to think about but also unnerving to do so.
It is actually imposing something contrary to plain reason and simple logic. To love the lovely and lovable, the delightful and adorable, the pleasant and pleasing – this is normal and reasonable, such is sensible and logical.
But to love the unlovable – the detestable, the despicable, the obnoxious – this is asking the irrational, the outrageous, the loathsome. Such is not far from doing the undoable, eating the uneatable, drinking the undrinkable. It is contradiction incarnate.
But then, how should it be? What could be done? Hate the hateful? Damn the reprehensible? Get rid of the condemnable?
Answer: Yes, in the realm of the natural. No, in the sphere of the supernal, in the context of sympathy and understanding, in the realm of mercy and compassion.
Someone nursing a sense of omnipotence and feeling of omniscience, grossly manifesting self-righteousness, plus egoism incarnate, customarily displaying anger and hatred, talking quasi-endlessly while repeatedly cursing as a matter of course – people with such personality features and consequent actuation pattern are not really themselves whereas they are but internally driven to do so, to be so.
“Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” This is not but poetry or imagination whereas it is a profound lesson and a wise mandate. Otherwise, what? Those who do not know how to forgive thus wallow in resentment, suffer from bitterness. Those who refuse to understand but instead harbor rancor and animosity, suffer from anguish and pain.
So it is that if some individuals make fools of themselves, this is their misfortune, their liability. Reason: Someone having a sound mind with consequent normal action and reaction patterns is a gift, a blessing that makes him/her understanding and wherefore forgiving.
There are certain truths that come to mind when witnessing or facing others who are obnoxious and detestable, disagreeable and unlovable: They must not be their own selves! They could have lost their sense of propriety and decency. They could have undergone a traumatic experience. They could have been the victim of cruelty. They could be but displaying their reactive anger, trying simply to hit back, attempting to make it even.
So it is that the unlovable, the hateful, the sickening becomes pitiful, understandable, forgivable. The hard-hearted meantime are the ones suffering precisely for being unforgiving, for being hard-headed.
There is nothing like peace of mind, goodness of heart, serenity of spirit – none of which belongs to the unforgiving.
So it is that refusing to forgive is to suffer for the hardness of heart, the anger of spirit, the turbulence of the mind. To be unforgiving is to lose interior peace and tranquility.
There is nothing profound nor complicated in such a painful reality: The unforgiving suffers while the offender is enjoying life!
Strange but true: The hard-hearted is pained while the crooked remains nonchalant and celebratory even. So it is that in the last analysis, the hater is a loser./PN
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