{"id":863,"date":"2012-08-26T23:32:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T03:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=863"},"modified":"2014-11-16T20:17:42","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T01:17:42","slug":"birthdays-and-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"BIRTHDAYS AND FORGIVENESS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trying to stay positive is sometimes hard work.<\/p>\n

Today was Lennie’s birthday. \u00a0He would have been 64. \u00a0It was one of those melancholy days when I kept thinking back to when he had turned 61. \u00a0I had only known him for several months and had decided to throw him a party. \u00a0It was an evening full of \u00a0fun and friends and singing and laughter. \u00a0Later that night he had told me that it was the very first birthday party that he had ever had. \u00a0For some reason that thought made me think about how quickly our lives pass by, one birthday at a time.<\/p>\n

Life is too short to hold grudges. \u00a0I have long ago forgiven Malia. \u00a0I cannot hate her, partly because I still love her.<\/p>\n

If someone has done something to hurt you, here are some points to consider:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What purpose does hate serve? \u00a0Hating someone does nothing to harm them. \u00a0Instead, it festers inside you, creating illness.<\/li>\n
  2. Look at the bigger picture: \u00a0in an awful time of heartache or crisis, was there something good that happened to you? \u00a0Were there people that showed you that they truly cared?<\/li>\n
  3. Be gentle with yourself. \u00a0You need time to heal. \u00a0Do as much as you need to. \u00a0Eat well. \u00a0Rest. \u00a0Try to surround yourself with the all the beauty that the world has to offer.<\/li>\n
  4. Don’t involve others. \u00a0As Iyanla Vanzant says, “Change your story.” \u00a0Your story is not about the bad that was done to you; those are just the facts and the facts are not your authentic story. \u00a0So don’t let someone else’s malice take away from what was true and good and wonderful in your life.<\/li>\n
  5. Did you know that the Aramaic\u00a0word\u00a0(the language that Jesus spoke) for ‘forgive’ is literally ‘to untie’. \u00a0Sometimes it is necessary to ‘untie’ yourself from people or situations that have harmed you. \u00a0You need to remove the negativity and become more positive about the future of your life.<\/li>\n
  6. Feel sorry for those that have harmed you. \u00a0They will have their own Karma to deal with. \u00a0Instead of hating them, feel pity for them, if for no other reason than they are not evolved or enlightened enough to be any different than they are.<\/li>\n
  7. Don’t let others have the power to change who you are. \u00a0Only by allowing them to change you, your ethics or your personality can they still have power over you.<\/li>\n
  8. Finally, ‘forgiving’ does not mean ‘giving in’. \u00a0Do what you believe is right. \u00a0You may need to see something through before you can truly move on. \u00a0Just make sure that you do it with grace and dignity and stick to only the facts as you know them to be.\"Lennie's<\/a>Kathryn<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    www.kathrynsmith.com<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Trying to stay positive is sometimes hard work. Today was Lennie’s birthday. \u00a0He would have been 64. \u00a0It was one of those melancholy days when I kept thinking back to when he had turned 61. \u00a0I had only known him for several months and had decided to throw him a party. \u00a0It was an evening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lennie-and-kathryn","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}