A POWERFUL LESSON ON FORGIVENESS FOR LIFE

Peanut the cat in captivity - “If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.”

My father taught me a powerful lesson on forgiveness.

His own father was a mining engineer and his family lived in the Philippines prior to World War II. They were captured by the Japanese and incarcerated there during World War II. He, his mother and sisters were sent to a prison camp at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila where they remained until the Philippine Islands were freed at the end of the war. His father, an enlisted man, was separated from the family and imprisoned with captured military personnel.

My dad was a teenager at the time. He, like other prisoners, struggled to survive. To keep from starving, he learned to eat his small, daily rations of rice without first removing the carcasses of worms in the bowl. But he ate better than most prisoners - he worked as an orderly in the prison hospital and, on occasion, was able to finish leftover food from patients. Though almost six feet tall, when he was finally freed he weighed only 95 pounds.

Life was difficult there by any standards. Numerous prisoners became ill and many died. Anger and bitterness toward their captors abounded. For years, even decades, after their eventual release from the prison camp, the men and women of Santo Tomas (like other prisoners of war) felt a smoldering bitterness toward the people who incarcerated them.

My father lost almost everything. His family lost their home. They lost their possessions. And harder still, they lost their freedom. But he also lost his father. My grandfather did not survive his captivity.

Yet I never heard my dad express any anger or resentment toward the Japanese soldiers or the Japanese people. Just the opposite. He taught me to regard ALL people with respect. He taught me to honor people of all races, nationalities and religions. He knew that bitterness only kept his wounds open and infected. Like a disease, his festering resentments could even infect others. And they could kill.

Alexander Pope has said, "To err is human; to forgive, divine." But that is not accurate. It's better said, "To err is human, but to forgive is human, too." Forgiveness is not an option for human beings. Forgiveness is essential for our health as individuals and necessary if we are to live together. To err is human, but to forgive is human, too. Perhaps to be perfect is divine. But to forgive is one of the most human things we can do.

And its never too soon to do something so very human.

From Lifesupport.

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