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It can be so hard to forgive because – so often – we simply are in the right and the
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scale of the folly, thoughtlessness and meanness of others seems utterly beyond our own measure.
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But there are two inviolable ideas which should nevertheless, in the face of the grossest
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behavior, be kept in mind to increase our chances of being able to forgive.
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Firstly: we must remember how the other person got there, to this place of idiocy and cruelty.
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Every irritating fault in another person has a long history behind it. They have become
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like this because of flaws in their development, which they did not choose for themselves.
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They were shaped by troubles—troubles which we cannot see but which we know must exist. The arrogant
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person was trapped (at some key point in their personal evolution) in an environment where
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being modest and reasonable seemed to guarantee they’d be trampled on. The hyper-critical
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individual has lived too much, as their personality was growing, around people who couldn’t
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take a gentle hint – so they came to rely on blunt assertions. The frustratingly timid,
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mousy person was (at some stage) terrified; the show-off learned their irritating manner
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around people who were hard to please. Behind every failing – behind everything that’s
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wrong and infuriating about those we meet – is a decisive trauma encountered before
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someone could cope with it properly. They are maddening but they got to be this way
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without meaning to. To forgive is to understand the origins of evil and cruelty. Secondly,
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and very strangely, there are difficult things about you too. Of course, not in this area.
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Not in any area remotely connected to the sort of lapses that destroy your faith in
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humanity. But in some areas, quiet areas that you forget about as soon as you’ve travelled
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through them, you too are a deeply imperfect and questionable individual. Gently, you have
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– in your own way – betrayed. Nicely, you have been a coward. Modestly, you have
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forgotten your privileges. Unthinkingly, you have added salt to the wounds of others. We
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don’t need to know anything about you to know this as a certainty. We must forgive
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because – not right now, not over this, but one day, over something – we need to
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be forgiven. We would – in the past – regularly have looked up to the heavens for this forgiveness.
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We do that less and less nowadays. But that doesn’t attenuate the need for some moments when we
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limber up to utter that most implausible word ‘sorry’ – or indeed stretch our ethical
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imagination in order to pronounce those even more arduous and unnatural sounding words, ‘I forgive you.
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