The power of forgiveness

As always I was watching and listening to something, a trainride through South Africa. Stories on a train. People talking about how it is and how it has been. I'm listening with more and more intrest, lives lead with such hardship and others with ease. Then a man says, I'm not quoting exactly, because I don't have it in exact words "yes, we've been through hardship, for three hundred years. Are we bitter? No we're not bitter. [ ... ] A lot of our people left to go to Australia and Canada, but I want to stay in my country. I love this land". I perked up a little at the 300 years bit. It's no way to look towards a brighter future. Forgiving doesn't mean you say it's ok, it just means that you're willing to let go and accept what you have now, and what things are now.

Then I got to thinking about where I'm at now, and what I know about my family and country from 300 years ago, and the answer is absolutley nothing. Yes, I know about the Swedish history and the fact that my relatives were more than likely farmers. Can I relate to their problems of harvests and our wars carried out in that time? No, I can honestly say I can't. It has nothing to do with me, sitting here, typing this in 2010. Of course I realize that without them I wouldn't be here. Had they not worked hard and had children I would never have been born, but that's more from an evolutionary standpoint.

Later in the show there was a white man from Zimbabwe whose farm had been taken, he was travelling to visit friends and family in Johannesburg. He said, something down the lines of "My father worked his whole life on that farm. He paid every cent back. He always took care of his African workers. [ ... ] one day we get a letter in the mail saying we have three months to leave the farm, as we're white and we've stolen the land, so we had no choice but to leave our home. The farm my father paid for. He never skipped on taxes. It just shows a ploy to pay the wrong people and get nothing in return but his conscience is clear, he bought the farm." He also wished to stay in his country, hoping things would work themselves out somehow.

What their stories really show is that in order for there to be a winner there has to be a loser. If someone gains something another sees it slip away. What is right and fair in this? I honestly don't know. Behind all these bigger issues there are individuals that might not care so much about politics and what's fair in a 500 year perspective. And how could they? They're living here and now. If something is done to me now, do I want payback for myself centuries after I'm dead? How will that benefit me? It won't, it would however cause complications for generations to follow. Who will be the first one to say "let's leave it all in the past"? The trauma is closer for the man from Zimbabwe, he personally experianced having his home taken away. His personal trauma doesn't compensate for centuries of oppression. Please misunderstand me correctly!

But the score will never be settled, the grudges will be shifted back and forth. The Zimbabwe man will tell his children about what he believed to been wrongly done, just like the other man speaks of 300 years of hardship, even though they didn't all involve him, some of them surely, but noone can live for 300 years. We do carry the troubles of the parent generation with us, so we all have to decide, for ourselves, if we will let what our parents did, or what was done to our parents effect how we treat others.

Do we let the past define us, or the future we can create together by simply forgiving and moving on, learning from the mistakes and evolve into more understanding and openminded people? To me the answer to that is evident, but then again, I'm about as Swedish as they come, I've never experianced oppression in any other context than being a woman in a man's world, I've never seen my nation at war, no revolution, no anarchy. So yeah, maybe it's easy for me to say forgive and let go.