TIME HEALS BUT FORGIVENESS MAKES YOU WELL

I’m along in years now, elderly, and like all of us my life has had its ups and down.  Life is never easy for any of us.  Loved ones leave or die and we feel a horrendous loss like a part of our heart, our life has been ripped right out of us.  Someone gossips about us and spreads rumors without knowing all the facts or twisting truth taking things out of context and injecting their own conclusions and it tarnishes your good reputation.  We over-extend our self financially and end up with financial issues that cause us grief much to our distress and at times, our embarrassment.   

We all sometimes make bad choices or others make bad choices and we get hurt, emotionally, physically, financially and even spiritually.  Sometimes we find it difficult to get beyond the pain, the grief, the hurt, the anger and the frustration that is left behind in the wake of the injury. 

Sometimes we can fix it.  More often we can’t and we have to just pick up the pieces and move on.  It is not an easy thing to do but time heals, if we let it.  This is when you need to truly live just one day at a time; don’t cling too yesterday and don’t project the future, just live today.  It is all we really have anyhow, just today.  We can’t go back and change one single moment of the past.  It is over and done with.  We do not know, cannot know what the future holds or even if we will see a new tomorrow.  None of us know that.  We can hope and dream and even plan for days to come but we cannot know what tomorrow will bring until it becomes today. 

Eventually, after a few days, weeks, maybe even a few months, depending on what the situation is, the immediate pain subsides.  The anger, the feeling of loss or the embarrassment eases and slowly fades into the shadows of your mind.  Time heals but it also has a tendency to leave scars behind.  Too often we find our self hiding behind those scars.  With withdraw into our own shell.  We stop truly communicating.  We over-react to a look or a comment that we might otherwise blow off or simply ask, “Did I hear what I think you said,” and ask for an explanation…and worse we refuse to let go and we dwell on all the hurt.  

Sometimes we even do the unthinkable, what we would not do.  Instead of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, we do unto others as others have done unto us and the cycle of damage rolls on from person to person and generation to generation.  As long as we allow past injury to dictate our present behavior it will never go away and nothing will change,  It will always be there to haunt you.  They say time heals, maybe, but it sure can leave some ugly scars behind.

It took me a long time to get this, really get this, accept it and put it into practice in my own life.  It is not time that truly heals…FORGIVENESS is the true healer.  It is hard to forgive when you have been seriously hurt.  It is hard to forgive those who have hurt you.  It is hard to forgive yourself for your own wrong doings, bad choices but learning to forgive is the only way you will ever truly heal.

Forgiveness is a whole lot more than “I’m sorry.”  “Okay, I forgive you.”  That is just the beginning.  You may never get an apology but you need to forgive anyhow.

Let me give you an example.  When I was a child and even into my young adult years there was someone who was treating me very badly, saying bad things about me and attempting and occasionally succeeding to do bad things to me.  I feared and hated this person.  I even tried to tell others whom I thought would help and do something about it what was going on but to no avail.  This person wouldn’t do that.

I had misunderstood.  I was the one to blame.  They wouldn’t believe me or maybe they did believe me but couldn’t or wouldn’t accept the possibilities or maybe were too insecure themselves to help. 

For years I feared and hated this person and avoided this person as much as possible.

I would literally quake inside if I found myself in a situation where I had to be alone in this person’s presence.  Eventually I learned to forgive, forgive for my own sake because I couldn’t live with that pain anymore.  I couldn’t live with the fear and the hate and ever truly move on in my life and be happy.  I couldn’t change what had happened.  I couldn’t make this person a better person.  I couldn’t make this person respect me.  I couldn’t make this person love me for who I truly am.  There was no way to retaliate and not bring myself down to their level of wrongness.  There was nothing I could do and it left me hurting and broken until I forgave this person and truly meant it.  You have to learn to love (agape kind of love) the person even when you abhor the behavior.   You have to come to recognize it is not the person you hate, it is the behavior.  Without the negative behavior you could really like that person.  It is love (agape love) that heals and forgiveness that makes you well and the love and forgiveness comes in time.  So I suppose, in a sense of the word, time heals.

Forgiving a person does not mean you ever have to like or trust that person again.  It doesn’t mean you have to be their friend or even be around them.  It doesn’t me that you will forget but you will learn from the past and are better able to keep yourself out of such situations.  It is the forgiveness that actually makes you well and able to truly move on and not let clouds of yesterday darken the sunshine of today.  You can finally dump the garbage and all that old baggage that is making your life painful, sorrowful and stuck in a bad place.  Forgiveness does that.

Not too long ago I talked with this person and I told them exactly how I felt and what their actions had done to me, how it had hurt me all these many years.  I told them I forgave them and even though I loved them as a person I could not like them because of their behavior toward me.  I did not and do not like the behavior and that for a time it had left me very broken.  Unfortunately the person laughed and said. “Yeh, but I enjoyed it and I told you no one would ever believe you.  I made damned sure of that.” 

For just a few seconds I cringed and recoiled like this person had just punched me in the gut.  For just a few seconds I wanted to strike out as venomously as I knew how but I didn’t.  I just walked away.  This person knows my feelings.  This person knows I am no longer holding a grudge or any hate toward them personally and that it was, is their actions and attitudes I hate and will no longer allow to hurt me.  I have forgiven them and shifted the burden.  It is now their baggage, their burden to carry and what they do with it is their problem.  I will probably never forget those injuries from the past but neither will I dwell on them or use them as an excuse for my own behavior.  It is finally over and I am well.

Source: # Http: / / www.shvoong.com/social-sciences/education/250298-education-today/ ixzz1ieCyiJ1A

The Civil Rights Movement was a major movement that brought about many changes for African Americans. In Michael Goldfield’s piece, The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, he tells of an example of one of those changes when he states that the, “1954 Brown v. Board of Education… case… [had] outlaw[ed] segregate[ion in] schools” (264). There were many similar cases before this one and cases that followed this one.  These cases gave African Americans and other minorities more power legally but were the legal powers given to them only temporary?

The very rights that African Americans had achieved through the Civil Rights Movement have been diluted by the mass incarceration of men of color. Michelle Alexander argues in, The New Jim Crow, that, “Mass incarceration has been normalized, and all of the racial stereotypes and assumptions that gave rise to the system are now embraced (or at least internalized) by people of all colors, from all walks of life, and in every major political party (176). She is saying that people, even minorities, have come to see people of color and associate them with certain crimes, so that it is not as big of a surprise to them when they see those same men imprisoned. These stereotypes have become ingrained within us over time and generations. These stereotypes help promote the imprisonment of minorities.

When imprisoned you are stripped of your rights and when you get back on the streets you don’t get those rights back. By focusing arrests in predominantly African American and minority neighborhoods, there is more of a likelihood of finding more black men doing illegal things. Even after these men are freed from the incarceration system they sometimes have a parole officer. The parole officer becomes ‘big brother’ and is constantly monitoring them after imprisonment, looking for any possible violations to send them back to prison. They have already lost their right to vote and thereby their political power legally but may not be able to protest either as this could send them back to prison. It is easier to be sent back to prison for them and that fear keeps them submissive and under the thumb of the powerful people in the government. Keeping minorities off of the streets and limiting their rights through incarceration keeps the minorities from rising up and becoming a dominant source of political power against the Conservative powers.

Affirmative Action seemed to help the working class avoid some of these economic fears but brought about a fear of your neighbor which is seen through the formation of the Minutemen. The Minuteman Project was brought about in 2004 because a lot of Americans had fear put into their minds that the immigrants that were coming over the border from Mexico illegally were taking their jobs. This group was formed of organized white American men. The group saw Mexicans as taking over and getting lots of benefits for illegally entering their country. According to Leo Chavez, as written in The Minuteman Project’s Spectacle of Surveillance on the Arizona-Mexico Border, the minutemen believed that an, “imminent danger to all Americans… [was that] rights and privileges of citizenship… were losing their value as a result of immigration” (134). The minutemen were focused on the illegal aspect of immigration. This stance that they took was not actually true as illegal immigrants do not have the same “rights and privileges of citizenship” because they are not citizens. The Minutemen used, “statistics… [to help] construct [a] rhetoric of fear” (Chavez 135). The Conservatives instilled the fear in the Minutemen and the Minutemen were going to further instill this fear into the masses of America. The Minutemen were unknowingly working for the Conservative party, in that they were doing the legwork for them. They didn’t see the government showing any effort to keep the illegal immigrants out of the United States, and the statistics seemed to show that they were right, so they decided to take the enforcement of the border on themselves. They showed action because they wanted something to be done and they wanted others to join their cause. The statistics helped them because when you look at numbers they sometimes seem daunting, especially in the case of illegal immigration. They were instilling the fear as the Conservatives had done in the past. The Conservatives realized that by just suggesting an idea to the working class, they would instill the fear in themselves. All they had to do was wait. By the Minutemen targeting illegal immigration specifically they were focusing on the, “notion of criminality… invoked [by] the ‘breaking into the country’ image” (Chavez 136). This act of “breaking in” invoked fear. If they can break into our country so easily what else can they do? By viewing the immigrants in this light, the Minutemen are losing focus on the goals of the working party to achieve balance with the elite, with regards to rights and opportunities.

The very thing that helped activists to gain rights throughout the Civil Rights Movement was now being impeached upon to limit those rights. Race and gender consciousness was the thing that Conservatives used to fight for what they wanted without doing any work. Nancy Maclean told of this in her piece, Conservatives Shift From Massive Resistance to Color-Blindness, when she reiterated the Conservative stance on Affirmative Action, as altered to fit the time. Conservatives said, “Affirmative action… abused the civil rights of others and was itself discriminatory” (Maclean 226). By instilling fear that one race was getting more than the other people started to question why and where those rights came from. ‘Am I getting less because they’re getting more?’ is the fear based mentality that was becoming prevalent at the time. This fear based in ‘more or less’ mentality was one of the major reasons for the formation of The Minuteman Project.

Though the Civil Rights Movement is said to be from the 1950’s to the 1980’s there are still people fighting for civil liberties today, such as the illegal Hispanic immigrants of Mexico, Central and South America. On an international level, because of Conservative influence Mexicans are now being seen, even more so than in the past, as an infiltration taking over the country. In reality, Mexicans are good for business and bring a lot of benefits to people throughout the country. Businesses want to employ Mexicans as they are a means of cheap labor. They accept much less monetary compensation than they are actually worth for all of the work that they do. For example, by Mexicans working in the food industry, it lowers the cost of labor for the employer and allows the business owner to offer you food at a lower price as well. Through Mexican’s denizen labor, you are saving a lot of money as a business owner or as an average citizen. These negative feelings toward Mexicans could be the start of negative feelings towards other immigrants as well.

The United States is founded on immigration. It has the values of equal opportunity and fair and equal treatment for all. This act of not treating immigrants fairly could be seen by other immigrants as a reason not to come to the United States and help the country advance itself. This fear mongering, especially as is seen in the case of The Minuteman Project, intended to make Americans shy away from immigrants may cause more harm than good. If we are seen as not wanting to help ‘outsiders’ and see everyone as a ‘potential threat’ then who will our allies be? If we have a constant fear instilled in us as Americans and we show this fear, this weakness, to alien (foreign) countries why would they protect us in our time of need?

W.E.B. Du Bois as quoted in the, The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, said, “it is a fight for ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its founding, become in truth the land of the thief and the home of the Slave” (Goldfield 262). Through hindsight we can see that these words, though stated many years before, were like a premonition towards the future state of America. Our fight for ideals through activism is what makes us have any rights at all, but “in truth,” what we have is not really much. Through implementations of various programs which we see as helpful, this hierarchical system has made us weak in our efforts to rise against its predominantly Conservative counterpart. Over time we have become blinded by the programs put in front of us that are meant to suppress the masses. We have accepted these programs as gifts, not realizing that by having them successfully implemented we are just like a crying child who has been given a pacifier. By accepting the Conservatives in power, we are doing nothing. We have become pacified. Why change a system that has so much going for it? Our fight for “ideals” has been given up and we are living in the delusion that our society is free when in fact we are living in, “the land of the thief and the home of the Slave”.

Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle. “The New Jim Crow,” in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the

Age of Colorblindness, p. 173-208.

Chavez, Leo. “The Minuteman Project’s Spectacle of Surveillance on the Arizona-Mexico

Border,” in The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. (2008), p.132-151.

Goldfield, Michael. “The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement,” in The Color of Politics:

Race And the Mainsprings of American Politics (1997), p. 262-287 (287-295 optional).

Maclean, Nancy. “Conservatives Shift From Massive Resistance to Color-Blindness,” in  

Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, p. 225-249.

After the mini-concert, the star even gave a few fans the oppurtunity to meet him, and get his autograph along with pictures. He’s extremely down to earth and greatful for his fans and all their support, and isn’t known as that typical famous celebrity brat that refuses to be seen in public and having to pay some attention to their fans.

I used to love watching the news – now it seems like the world has gone crazy. I hear about deaths every day, almost always murders. Conflicts are consistently happening in the Middle East and aid support is needed there. Global warming and the environment of our planet appears to be disintegrating with every light we turn on.

Take a look at the graph, see how low the UK economy is? The forecasts look good, but are they going to turn out the way they should do? 

I don’t know what’s going to happen to world, but if you base your opinion off what you hear on the news, it definitely can’t be a good sign.

What do you think about the current state of the world? Where do you think it’s going? How do you think the world will look like in 50 years?

Please comment below.

In the midst of a rising popularity, Justin Bieber rocked odor issues. A woman named Mariah Bieber Yeater accused as the father of a boy who birth. Yeater said Bieber and his ever having sex.

Hear the allegations, Bieber did not stay silent. This Canadian singer to defend himself. He denied all the allegations Yeater. Bieber confirmed these allegations very crazy and unreasonable.

“The allegations, 100 percent not true. This is the first time something like this happens. This is really crazy,” said Bieber told TMZ.com quoted as saying by Reuters on Monday, November 7, 2011.

Singer of ‘Baby’ was added as a celebrity himself aware of the spotlight. And he also was prepared to face the various problems that might discredit him.

“I’m sure this is not the last. I knew I was a target,” says Bieber.

Meanwhile, in the event ‘Today Show’, Bieber denied knowing Yeater. He claimed to know nothing Yeater.

“It’s very crazy every person wants to make false accusations,” he added.

As is known, some time ago, Yeater accused Bieber has to impregnate. Yeater has filed a lawsuit against Bieber. In his complaint files, the Yeater admitted he had sexual intercourse with Bieber on October 25, 2010.

Yeater make a confession after she gave birth to a baby boy named Anthony Markhouse Trystin Yeater. Baby boy is now almost four months old.

Well yet another famous singer has been splashed across the newspapers and all over the internet in the latest celebrity scandal. Apparently a Justin Bieber fan has claimed, albeit publicly to Star magazine, that she and the Biebenator had a sexual encounter in a bathroom backstage at one of his gigs, resulting in her pregnancy with her son Trystan. Of course this then exploded all over the interweb and now everybody knows about it.

The fan in question is named as Mariah Yeater, a 20 year old single mother.

Her son Trystan is now 3 months old, however she has been known to accuse her ex boyfriend of also being Trystan’s father before she accused Bieber and is also being investigated for aleggedly slapping her ex boyfriend when he refused to belive her claims. Revealing what happened she says that her and JB entered a bathroom after he asked her if they could go somewhere to be alone. She continued that when they were alone he changed from being ‘lovey’ and ‘gushy’ to being aggressive with her whilst having sex!! Who would have thought it. More recently she says she has proof that Trystan is his son and has handed it to the courts, what the proof is exactly is anyones guess.

However when Justin got wind of these rumours he categorically denies ever meeting Mariah Yeater and has agreed to take a paternity test to prove the child is not his. If the baby is not in fact Bieber’s then he says he will be sueing Mariah.

JB also made an appearance on Today early in the week denying ever to have met Yeater.

He also hit out at the rumours at the MTV EMAs in Belfast saying, “There has been a lot of ‘crap’ on the internet lately…”

If the baby does turn out to be his, of which i highly doubt it will, then JB has some explaining to do and could potentially ruin his career as an artist.

See JB perform live at the MTV EMAs below:

Do you know that sickness has entered your soul? a soul  fed by fear, digestion never possible, hunger  constantly dwelling.

Do you know that you have stood still, unmoved? unmoved and, rooted in a routine that kills not only passion but buries love alive.

Know that you are free, only your mind can control you to delve in such darkness…if you let it.

Know that freedom is a thought away, only the mind can catch it, if it’s free and willing.

Your heart holds the the compass in the direction of truth, not to far away on the train of thought.

Come from beneath and uncover love through the tunnels of desperation, a violent moment of imagination casts out the demon of routine.

Allowing one to become an original not a photocopy of what has been done before but clean and innocent.

One that has not been tainted by fear or hold remembrance to the death of passion.

One who has the freedom of mind, imagination that has not been enslaved by the greys in life only coloured by the experiences.

Do you know you have forgotten your divine right? right where wrongs were unborn and beauty was the parent …remember.

How you going to use this day?

Do you want to use it the way you will or you want to do as part of some fixed program?

Are you going to waste it or want to make it long enough to be remembered for its beauty and achievements?

Are you going to make it sad or want to make it important by giving a life to it?

Do you want to forget this day or want to hold something which you might have traded for it?

Do you want to regret this day or you want harness it as a beautiful memory of your life?

Do you want to make it mechanical or you want to learn from this day?

Do you want to fail this day or you want to succeed?

So Today is a beautiful day, How do you want to make this day?

I would appreciate if whomsoever passes by this post, Drop in your views about what would you do today? How do you to treat this day?