Get over it!

Mastering forgiveness seems to be one of life's biggest hurdles. There are so many questions surrounding it. How does one forgive? What does it mean to truly forgive? How do you forgive someone you love when they really hurt you? How do we forgive ourselves?

After reading a few books of Augustine's Confessions, I feel like I know what he would say. He talks about the origin of thought, how do we think about thinking? We can witness our own thinking, but how can we think about our thinking? He would say that god creates these thoughts in our mind. He would probably also say that because god forgives us, we can forgive. God gives us the example and we must follow it. If god forgave us, it would be a lot easier to forgive ourselves.

But unfortunately I don't believe in god.

I'm pretty good at forgetting. I can forget about something. But forgiveness is different. It's a deep level of understanding, putting ourselves in someone else's shoes and changing our attitudes towards that person. "She really didn't have to call me terrible names. Why would she do that? Maybe she had a bad day. I don't know." Usually it's easier to forgive one-time things because we know the person who did it isn't usually like that. They didn't mean it. It's especially easy to forgive someone who's sorry. We see that they regret their actions, but then we pity them? Is that forgiveness? Because someone regrets their actions doesn't always make it easier to forgive. Then it depends on the size of the wrong they committed against you.

Is it easier to forgive someone you love? Sometimes it is. I would assume this is because we understand that person more than people less close to us. We also care enough to try to move on from whatever happened. But what if they make you question how much you love them? What if what they did is so great that you're not sure if it's worth it. If you love them it's always worth it. If you truly love someone you can make it work. But you have to work together to make it work. Sometimes with people you love it's even harder to put yourself in their shoes. Sometimes it's too painful to put yourself in their shoes. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you're in their shoes because it's just against your principles.

So is it all a matter of principles? That, depending on the principle challenged, it is easier to forgive. If the principle challenged is one that doesn't have so much sway over your life, it is easy to forgive the person who challenged it. If it is one that dictates a lot of how you live your life, it will be much harder to forgive. That makes sense right?

And if someone who is not close to you challenges a strong principle of yours, it is easy to write them off as just "someone you don't like".

So how do we forgive ourselves? If we don't forgive ourselves, things can get messy. Life seems a lot more stressful, the burdens on our backs get much bigger and heavier, we have a hard time dealing with emotional stress in other ways, and we have a hard time forgiving others. This may be the most difficult one. First of all, if we don't forgive ourselves, it's going to be really hard to just write ourselves off and say "I just don't like myself". We all know that doesn't work. So what if we used the same method that we use to forgive people we love? I suppose putting ourselves in our own shoes is a good method. We put ourselves into context. "Well I did call her all those terrible names, I was having a bad day."

To truly forgive ourselves though, first takes admitting the mistakes we made (which could be a whole other blog, so we won't get into that). If we admit we're wrong, we're no longer in denial, which is something that usually takes forgiveness's place. If we are not in denial about what we did wrong we can face the facts and move forward towards truly forgiving ourselves.

So what does true forgiveness look like? It's not just understanding, it's a lack of bad feelings about an event, and a lack of negative associations with an event. We no longer look back at it and cringe or get nauseous, or get angry or feel hate. We also won't be afraid of that event reoccurring if we've truly forgiven ourselves or someone else. It could reoccur (probably not if we've had to forgive ourselves), but we can trust people again.

So is forgiveness about trust? Relearning to trust people or ourselves? After we admit something wrong happened, and we've understood both sides of the story, we relearn to trust people or ourselves so that when we look back at what happened we see it as the past, completely over, with no lingering negative feelings.

"But it's so difficult!" It's difficult, but don't beat yourself up about it- forgiving is difficult for everyone.

                                                               (Forget-me-nots)

What's coming to you...

I have a lot of trouble with this word: 'deserve'.

I feel like this word is abused by people. How does one really deserve something? We deserve good things and bad things.

When I was given my first role recently, several people congratulated me and told me I deserved it. I, however, did not feel that I deserved it. I had not prepared my audition very well and wasn't even sure if I really did want a role. I was using the audition as a way to practice performing before my recital. If this is something that I didn't work towards and didn't even want, how did I deserve it?

Is happiness even something that we all deserve? I would be the first one to say that everyone deserves happiness, no matter who they are, because I believe that no one is truly evil, just confused. But if all we've done to deserve happiness is to be born, do we really deserve it?

Maybe 'deserving' is somewhere between 'having a right to' and 'being worthy of'. We all have a right to happiness, but we don't have a right to getting a role. Whether we are all worthy of happiness is something that people may debate, but if you've worked hard enough you could be worthy of getting a role.

I can say that I have a right to happiness, but on a day when I'm contrite and wrapped up in myself I might have trouble admitting I deserve happiness.

Perhaps, to me, the word 'deserve' connotes the idea of hard-work that merits a reward, but maybe to some it connotes the idea that everyone has a right to happiness.

Another example to this would be when people say that you deserve another chocolate biscuit. I would immediately think that I didn't deserve it unless I had done something like wash the dishes, with that reward in mind. I may not deserve another chocolate biscuit if I haven't been to the gym that day. This may be a bad example, because I always think everyone has the right to another chocolate biscuit.

Is it unhealthy to think this way? It doesn't mean that I don't think I deserve some things. I deserve the mark on that I essay I just got back. I worked hard with that grade in mind. I earned it.

So no, I'm not unhealthily hard on the world, because I do believe everyone has the right to happiness and love and chocolate biscuits, but whether you deserve it, depends.

What am I feeling?

Is love different from person to person? Do we all define love differently? Can we only love someone with a similar definition?

Our society and popular media portray love as something closely related to sex. My cat loves whoever gives her her dinner. Sex In The City doesn't seem to have any love. Even my parents seem to have a different idea of what love is.

Are we taught love? Do we learn love? It seems to be as difficult to define as defining what part of music moves us.

It's true that there are lots of different kinds of love. I love food, I love my cat, I love my brother, I love my friends, and I love my boyfriend. But verbalising what separates a romantic relationship from a close friendship can be very hard to do.

Is it what you share with one another? Is it what you do together? Is it your feelings for each other? How come you can break up with a boyfriend, but not a best friend? If you stop feeling a particular way towards your boyfriend it's a rule that you "break-up". What does that mean? You stop seeing each other? Not always. You stop sleeping together? Not always. You stop loving each other? Not always. You lose the intimacy?

To be intimate with someone is to be very close with them. You understand each other completely. But you can still understand someone completely and not love them. To be intimate with someone when you are in love is to feel completely comfortable around them, like they would never judge you. This is necessary in love.

When a romantic relationship ends it hurts. Sometimes the pain is terrible. Perhaps a dependency is necessary in love.

So why do we search for it for so much of our lives, and when we find it we feel that our lives are fuller? When we feel like our lives are fuller, we feel like this is what separates us from the animals, this is what makes us human. So is that all love is? Something to make us feel human?

Uplifting

I am currently in a situation I think a lot of people can relate to. I am drudging through the 4th week of "midterms".

This afternoon, while I walked amongst the tall office buildings of downtown Montreal on my way to the music faculty, the pressure from all the pending assignments weighed me down. The tall, gray buildings closed me in and reminded me I couldn't escape from the structure that school forces upon me. At least for the next few weeks. But then, waiting for the bus, I looked far enough down Sherbrooke that I could see where the sky meets the street, and I remembered one of my New Year's resolutions: to look up more often.

When I looked straight up at the sky and everything in it, I was reminded that there really was no ceiling over my head, and that me and all my worries were just a tiny, tiny part of the big, big world.

No one ever remembers to look up. We all only ever look straight ahead, thinking about what we have to do next, and where we're going. But if you look up every once in a while, you remember that it's not that big of a deal. There's more to life :-)

Art Appreciation Can Be Gross

Sometimes I feel like I have an extra gland. Sometimes I'm embarrassed of it because I can feel it showing. It only swells on rare occasions though.

I have an art gland. Lots of people I know have art glands. But not everyone has one. Personally, I think everyone who doesn't have one is seriously missing out.

Ok. So it's basically my appreciation for art. But I call it a gland because you can almost feel it react to beauty, the way you can almost feel your pituitary gland react to sunshine for the first time after winter.

But my art gland has been very happy the past few days.

I enjoyed 5 very different types of music this week. Rehearsals for part of a concert for MNM ( http://www.festivalmnm.ca/fr/2011/prog/concert/27415/), a tabla demonstration in ethnomusicology class, (http://www.shawnmativetsky.com/bio.html), a Cappella Antica concert, and the Interpol concert. And I've seen my first ballet, Giselle (http://pda.qc.ca/pda-evenement/4249/giselle-les-grands-ballets-canadiens-de-montreal.en.html)

I promised myself this wouldn't be a music blog, but I have to say that that's an awful lot of music for three days. It's hard to take in. But I think that's when my art gland is truly at it's peak. There's so much to take in that there's no time to second guess your thoughts on it. You have to just process all the information. All of it.

Seeing Giselle was definitely a memorable experience. It was visual beauty in a way I've never seen it before. It moves. And it's being created by someone right in front of your eyes. (The music to Giselle, however, is not remarkable.) There's so much to process because there are so many levels to this art. The story and all its implications, the choreographer's interpretation of the story, how the choreographer thinks the dance represents the story and the emotions of the characters, etc. There's an awful lot to think about when observing this art-form, and it's constantly changing. Then there's also the enormous feeling of admiration for these dancers.

My art gland is busy processing quite a few things at the same time, and the easiest way to do that is to compare the new information to the last time you've seen anything like this. My art gland immediately pulled out Degas' dancers. This was a bad choice on the part of my art gland, because the art appreciation hormones doubled at the image of Degas' paintings. After a smile and a giggle, and my art gland had heaved out as much awe as it could, I could resume my concentration on the ballet.

Ew.

My hungry art gland is pretty satisfied at the moment. But could this become an addiction?

Heavy

After a heavy weekend, I enjoyed some light entertainment tonight: steak and ice cream. 

My yoga teacher on Friday talked about us as "human beings". Sometimes we need some lightness to relax and just "be". She said we focus too much on doing, doing, doing, and I have to agree. In our north american society we grow-up thinking that this is what makes us human. We created the world we know now and we keep creating and recreating it. There is so much energy being spent making that sometimes I fear there won't be any space left to breathe. Sometimes I feel like there is so much mindless doing that I feel numb and this is when I question what separates us from animals. Animals don't have emotions, they don't think about their next creation, what they're going to do next to improve themselves, where they want to be in 5, 10, 20 years, what they have to have done in their lives. Animals just are. My dog is always very happy to see me, and yesterday I told him is was especially nice to see him too because I knew all he thought about was eating, pooing, walks, and playing. It's a depressing thought to think that maybe all this doing is all that makes us human. 

But we have emotions. We can be happy or sad, we love and hate, etc. But when there's none of that, what do we do? When we're numb and suffocated by all the doing, how do we know we're still human? How do we know we won't suddenly start walking on four legs and have to run after our food?

It's difficult to "be" sometimes, because it isn't tangible. You can't work at being, you can't study being, you can't sketch being, or practice it. You just have to accept it. But accepting something you can't explain or understand is very difficult, similar to accepting god. Some people will tell you "He just is".

But I realised recently that we're conscious of life whether we like it or not. That also makes us human. We're conscious of our being alive and how that is. We may have forgotten why, but we always know how. We have control over it. We always have control over our lives, whether we feel like we do or not. We are always controlling our lives. We're keeping ourselves alive.

But this is what animals don't know. For them, it is instinct. But we understand it.

It's easy to forget what makes us human. There are times when we feel like less than animals. Like machines. So when you feel like a machine from all the time you've spent doing, when you stop doing, what do you feel like then?

What separates us from machines? The fact that we are alive. That's when we're being, and not doing. 

Now how do we bring ourselves back to feeling human again? By realising that we know this is a depressing place to be. We could recognise this as an emotion. 

We could then call upon other feelings. Feelings like happiness, and love. And we could start small. We could start with steak and with ice cream. And then we could move on to music. And then we could move on to people. 

Don't judge me, but...

...but I really feel this is nonsensical.

Feelings. We all have them. To some they're difficult to figure out. To others that’s very easy. 

Sometimes, I feel like I'm colourblind. It's like I have fewer possibilities for what I’m feeling than most people. They’re just different shades of brown. Or different levels of anxiety. Some people have a wide variety of options. Usually, those people are also talented at interpreting emotions, the way some people can just tell aqua and turquoise are different. 

Artists are trained to interpret these colours. Can we train ourselves to interpret our feelings just as clearly? Would it make a difference? I suppose most of us don’t do it already because we don’t care?

Maybe if we could feel as clearly as we see colours, we wouldn't have double standards about them: we have to feel, but we can't show it; the possibility of feeling the wrong way; having feelings proves our weakness.

I think these double standards exist because we don't understand the way we feel. It's difficult for most people. We have to think about them much more than we actually do. Usually when my feelings seem grey, it's because there are a whole load of different ones mixed up. We don’t take the time to trust ourselves and separate them. 

If we understood the way we feel and why, we would have more confidence in ourselves and what we do. Our feelings drive our lives, but if we don't know who's driving, of course it's unnerving. 

We shouldn't be ashamed of the way we feel; we just do. There are so many reasons that shape that. So when we ask ourselves "Why am I feeling this way?", instead of saying that you or someone else is stupid, maybe you should take the time to question that answer. That's probably not the real reason. 

We probably do this so rarely because it's so scary to go and find those real reasons, but then, why should we be afraid of our feelings. They are, in fact, our feelings. We're terrified of our feelings, because of this preconceived idea that we're out of control of our feelings, that they could drive us crazy. But, again, if we figure out who's driving, we might find a way to stop them from driving us crazy.

With the way our lives have evolved, there’s no time. We care less and less about the things that really make us who we are. It’s scary and uncomfortable, so we move on. Nothing must put us out of control of our own lives. Not even ourselves. 

We’re afraid of the chain effect that dealing with our feelings will have on the many other aspects of our lives. We have no time, because we have too many other things to deal with. Or do we make it that way so that we don’t have to deal with our feelings? Is it an excuse?

So how can we be weak for showing our feelings? We are strong for believing that we have enough self-control to take the time to remove ourselves for an extra second to think about who we are. We feel because who we are. We feel because of values, fears, needs. These are all unique to us, and we should remember that it’s important to express who we are. 

Therefore, it’s impossible to feel the wrong way. You're feeling your way. You can’t feel anyone else's way. 

Why don't we all just accept it and stop guessing and denying and feeling guilty about feeling? It's your life. Do you understand why you're doing what you’re doing with it?