“Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.”
-Wayne Dyer

Bitterness runs deeper than we imagine. I have been a master at holding grudges. Way more than my body, mind and soul could bear the burden of. Turns out, I had way too many people wrong me in every possible way. This needed to stop, for I was the lone sufferer, and no one cared as people didn’t even know I detested them.

As I talk of this, I realise this is me opening Pandora’s box. Being a highly sensitive person, I’ve always felt the malicious nature of people around me. Intentional or unintentional acts. Along with holding grudges, I had also mastered the art of numbing my intuition. And I definitely paid a great deal, to take these lessons, only to realise later, that I had already been warned before. As they say, the lessons repeat again and again until we learn from them. And finally one fine day, on a rather normal day, there surely was a shift within. It must have been a random dull day, standing in line for some uninteresting work, there was a eureka moment. Everything made sense in a blink of an eye.

With the amount of wisdom and consciousness that I have gathered till date, I could see my life in hindsight and could vividly see how each thing led to another and dots joined effortlessly. As if someone flashed a bright light on them in a pitch dark room. The friends I weaned from. Some relatives. Some colleagues, and many more seemingly energy draining people.

I continue reiterating this idea, the more I’m understanding it. The importance of protecting our energy. Like the time in our life, energy too is a limited resource. We are masters of deciding how and where we choose to invest or exhaust it. After the nightmarish school life, as a teenager I had turned so much in my shell, that I never realised it was a cocoon I was stepping into. My humble abode for years to come.

Even after reading number of books or listening to thousands of videos, certain experiences need to be taken first hand. And that is when we learn to embrace what we call as life. Releasing the emotional toxicity, we must learn to forgive. As Louise Hay rightly says, forgiveness is like onion. Everytime we forgive someone or something, we go a layer deeper, to work on some more forgiveness. And it goes on, until all one can feel is unconditional love and compassion. I definitely have a while, to reach that level of Nirvana. Until then let me share some of my learning about this forgiveness funda.

The deeper I delved into self-help, the grudged started walking closer, and creating the grip tighter each day until the point of suffocation. Having done some considerable amount of inner work, I’d often find myself complaining that I don’t know how to forgive, for forgiveness is the ultimate virtue. Let anyone do anything, and you calm your mind by forgiving them for their ignorance. For they do not know what hurt they inflict. Be like a saint. Continue smiling and maintain the halo, for it may fall. Honestly, it all angered me, and I was reaching my ultimate boiling point. I felt to myself, that all this is bull shit and unfair business. I just can’t forgive the way people behave nasty with others, if not me. There is simply no cure for their malice.

Whoever I turned to, told me I just had to forgive and let go. To a point I realised they themselves were the vampires of my life, I was trying to distance myself from. Asking me to stifle my energy in a way it simply refused to turn. I finally declared to myself, this is not happening, that I’m not the forgiving kind of a person. I’d probably die with all the grudges bottled in me. And paradoxically, this very thought felt liberating. Releasing the need to forgive forcefully was a cancerous thought, that had gripped my mind and thinking. It grew uncontrollably.

“What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.”
-Lady Gaga

I had years and years of pain, which I never really let myself feel. The grief that was brushed under the carpet. The mishaps that were hushed. The Godly behaviour I was expected to display. But instead, I started learning to feel the pain, grief, sorrow, and most importantly anger. A hell lot of burning rage. Whoever meets me, finds me as a chilled out person. But for the waters to still, I have had to let go off the volcano that I held within me. It had to burst one fine day. All the guilt and shame, that I carried to my bosom, had to be let loose. The process is definitely ongoing, but important to be shared. I learnt to let go off my ores that kept me going upstream.

To reach the point of forgiveness, or even consider forgiving someone, there needs to be a lot of inner work that goes in. There surely are people, who wake up one fine morning, and decide to let it all go. But I seem to have chosen the other way. I have been understanding the importance of feeling any toxic emotional wound, and then embalming it with forgiveness. It heals way faster and effortlessly, than shoving forgiveness down the throat. It shall only rise its ugly face as resentment, or some kind of a physical ailment.

Since decades, I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about being in the present moment and how beneficial it is in umpteen number of ways. Learning to embrace all the events that have helped me become the person I am today, makes me value the active act of forgiveness. We often don’t value anything until we pay for it. I guess, the same goes for the freedom that one gains on forgiving others, that feels heavy on our chest. We know the intensity of this weight only after it was released. We can finally breathe.

As I begin to publicly open about things I’ve never shared with a single soul, I am given an immense sense of courage to stand up for myself and for anyone who may need my support. Be like the lighthouse, for people to know where to find me. Oftentimes, all we need is a pat on our back, and a loving embrace by someone, who ensures us it will only get better from hereon.

My healing embrace happened recently. A Divine touch I had longed my entire life, and a mighty wave of memories came gushing by. Washing all the dirt off the shores of my heart. I can never forget the feeling I experienced. I would never trade it with any damn thing in the world, for it healed innumerable broken parts of me. Silently telling me how Divinely I was loved and cared for. Looked after lovingly for all these years, even though it felt like a dance in the furnace. I feel I’m stepping out as a beautifully moulded vase, having the capacity to fill myself with Divine Love, and let it overflow to everyone who comes in contact with me. What is love, that is never shared? And what is compassion, that is never cared?

“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
-Albert Einstein