Life is about love and forgiveness

To the editor:

It is a fascinating thing to see when a grown up child realizes how much their parents loved them growing up. It usually happens in stages, during childhood the child often feels the parent is just doing what their supposed to be doing: providing for them, protecting them, taking care of them, sacrificing for them, loving them.

They also often feel at some point that the parent has treated them unfairly, let them down, been abusive or mean. They do not see the whole parent. And yet, later on they may get really angry at their parent for the mistakes the parent made.

For instance: the parent's addiction, neglect, irresponsibility, immaturity or some other similar offense. Mind you, this child I am referring to has grown up to understand what happened in their childhood; they are in their late twenties now, early thirties; the second stage.

Then something happens, the child who is processing the way they were raised has children themselves. They have a spouse and a growing family and they start to make mistakes, feel their inadequacy, even wonder how their parents did it; how were they able to raise them?

This can happen and often does. Or they don't get married or have children but become mature enough emotionally to see that everyone struggles, that everyone has problems, big problems, and virtually everyone is doing the best they can at any given moment, even their parents that they learned to dislike at some point. They begin to see that, yes, their parents loved them. They may have done a lousy job of parenting but yes their parents loved them, no doubt about it.

That is the third stage. And then the child begins to remember the good stuff, what there is of it, and they begin to love their parents again. They stop hating them, and then best of all, they forgive them. That is the fourth and final stage. What is life really about when it comes to relationships, any kind of relationship? It is about love and forgiveness. That is the final destination of all relationships on this earth.

It is a process, it can take a long, long time to get there, but anyone can get there if they try to learn to love and forgive. It is always worth it for the healing that comes soon after sincere forgiveness.

There is no problem in heaven and on earth that more love will not improve, help solve, or that will not help you reach that point of forgiveness someday. All the masters from the beginning of time who have penetrated to the core of existence, the core of reality, have said the same thing: Love is at the core of reality. Love is at the center. We all will find this out, eventually. If we persevere, and find the faith and courage to go on with the process.