Wednesday, April 28, 2010

To Forgive is Not to Forget

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of forgiveness lately.

It's one of the hardest thing a person can do---to forgive. It's not just about pride, it's about trying to prevent a wrong from being committed...again. It's about having self esteem and not allowing someone to bring it down. It's about laying down boundaries and telling someone "You can't cross this one."

The "F" word is a tricky deal, especially when forgiveness pertains to friendship. You make a bargain with someone, trade some trust with the understanding that we will both value and handle it with care. Trust just happens to be the most fragile of valuables. We throw it back and forth until someone drops it, and then we wonder why we were so quick to toss it in the first place.

It is strange how the inner turmoil you tackle with before you reach forgiveness does not come with an expiration date. It takes its own time. You can't just snap your fingers and forgive, just like you can't just snap your fingers and trust. I only know that the deepest of broken trusts, like the deepest of scars, never actually fade. They're there as a reminder to teach you what your mind, like your body, can handle.

Yet, as soon as we're ready to forgive, a weight is lifted because we don't forgive for them, we forgive for ourselves. Still, we can never go back to square one thanks to a little thing called memory. As long as we have it, we never go back to the beginning. Life doesn't have one big rewind button. (But wouldn't it be great if it did?)

Even though we forgive at our own pace, apologies makes a big difference. Sometimes who tells you sorry-and means it-gives you this newfound option of forgiving sooner than later. They are telling you that you can rid of this pain now. Forgiveness doesn't mean you forget what they've done. It doesn't mean you give them an easy out or excuse their behavior. It only means you won't be held prisoner to their action anymore.

Look, I'm not saying that everyone deserves forgiveness or that people who can't forgive are necessarily wrong. I often wonder about people who are thrust into terrible situations and find the ability to forgive. I don't know if I'd be able to do that. I hope I never have to make that decision. But from sample size, I know that carrying around the burdon of their actions isn't yours to carry.

Think of your emotions like a meteorology report. Anger clouds your judgement. Your life becomes a stormy mess and it's up to you to pick up the debris left behind and clear away the mess. If you choose to forgive, don't forget what happened and ignore the warnings. Just move forward, keep your inner doplar on storm watch and enjoy the sunny days ahead.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

What 20 Innings Will Teach You

With the Cards losing to the Mets, 2-1 in...get this... a 20 inning game, we learned a few things-
1. Lopez is all around entertaining:

Ladies and gentleman- he fields, he hits grand slams and now we know he can pitch a scoreless inning during a 20 inning marathon.

2. The longer a game lasts, the harder it is to leave:

I couldn't do anything else. Especially after the 11th inning. Not that I don't usually ignore things around me during Cards games, but this game left me alone in my house-in the dark-and refusing to communicate with anyone through anything more than a text.

3. The Mets really didn't want to win:

I know you're thinking, "But they won! The Cards lost!" Perhaps we should rewind to the ...18th inning (?), when LaRussa pretty much conceded the game by throwing utility guys Felipe Lopez, and in the two subsequent innings, Joe Mather, out on to the mound to play the role of pitcher. Why didn't the Mets score, like, eight runs?

Not to play "Mean Girl", but do they really like us or something? I know you will counter with the argument that the Cardinals didn't really seem to want to win either, but I have a theory. We'll get there. Just a few more...

4. Lopez and Mather take "utility" to a whole new level:

They will do anything. Let's see what else we can make them do!

5. Some people are too lazy to leave their nosebleed seats and move down to the luxury seats:

In one of the latter innings, the Fox camera was focused on one fan, then slowly panned out to show him sitting in the third upper deck all alone. Why are you so lazy and sad, drama queen?

6. McCarver becomes funny when the game gets too long:

I was annoyed with him in the beginning, as usual. He talked about Garcia's no-hitter from the third inning on. He kept saying things like, "This player NEVER..." and "This player ALWAYS..." as if to purposefully jinx them. Then, somewhere around the 14th inning, he became funny. Or maybe I got delirious.

7. We get geeky when they get human:

Nerd Alert! Every Cardinal fan I've talked to thus far cannot stop geeking-out over the inning Lopez pitched. We find it highly amusing and humorous that Lopez and other players (Like Wainwright! And Pujols!) were also cracking up at the situation. Call it infectious joy.

They usually spend a lot of time masking their emotions. It gets boring listening to the usual cliched remarks after every game. That was some real emotion in an unreal situation. And we loved it.

And how about a theory:

In the spirit of the final season of the epically awesome series Lost and Doc Jensen's lengthy, baffling, and "out-there" theories featured at ew.com, I couldn't help but come up with an explanation for this *illogical game.

*Illogical because we could not, for the life of us, score a run---even with our runners at second and third with NO OUTS in the 14th. Not a characteristic of a LaRussa team!

It may be crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the Cardinals were stuck in a limbo world. It was almost like purgatory. It was as if the baseball powers were telling us,

"Big Mac as hitting coach? Not without a price! You must remain in this game against the only other team that will not score, the Mets (who are apparently on their way to Hell). Once you have suffered through the imposed penance and atoned for this sin, we will re-evaluate."

Yes. I was thinking this during the game. Hey, it was 20 innings long. Do you blame me?

Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words – the words live on
for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is
immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.
-J. Michael Straczynski

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