The attribute of the strong

All of us are born into the world, essentially, with a clean slate.  Unbeknownst to us at that time, and whether we like it or not, there will be people, environments, and experiences that occur that take that clean slate, and make it dirty.

Childhood isn't something, in a perfect world, that should be "endured".  It shouldn't be something we have to persevere through.  It should be something we get to look back on and marvel at.  Recollect a time in our life when our world was mostly care free, stress free, and beautiful.

As kid....as a young person, the "matter" that makes us up, is still very soft.  Pliable.  It is still waiting to be molded.  We are the clay, and life is the potter.  Life can sometimes hand us very wicked potters, and shape us into things that are twisted, cruel, misshapen, and dysfunctional.

The fact is, most of the problems we face as adults are handled by us in a way that was molded in us when we were very young.  The inability to trust, the inability to be honest.  Our love or hate for something can often be traced back to the days of being in the hands of the potters.

Often times when an adult had been an "only child", they often need to be spoiled, pampered, and catered to.  They often lack the ability to be selfless because it wasn't learned at a young age.  

For others, it's the inability to let go of things they feel wronged by.  And it magnifies and manifests itself into the grown up version of the kid that felt betrayed, and wronged.

"My dad wouldn't let me eat all the chocolate I wanted."

..........says the kid, who grew up into a fat adult.  Never able to shed that daddy complex of being neglected.  Said fat adult never fully wanted to take responsibility for their own choices.  Their own wants.  They held onto what "daddy did to me", instead of growing into someone that understood that at some point, they are an adult responsible for their own choices.

Now they are obese, and bitter because they are and because they let someone else give them a "hang up" that "caused" them to make such poor choices.

"My dad spoiled my brother, and let him blow out my birthday candles because he threw a fit about it." 

....says the kid, who grew up into the hate harboring adult.  Never developing the ability to let go of feeling wronged, regardless of how significant, or insignificant.  Destroying relationships with bitterness, anger, jealousy, and resentment.  No matter how big or small the wrongdoing is, it's met with 100% of hate and venom.

Some experiences or events are far more impacting than that.  Abuse of various kinds can and do tend to scar forever, and twist peoples souls and inside into a sort of ugliness that often times cannot be undone.

But outside of those truly horrible experiences that need professional help to overcome, most of us still lack the ability to let go of our childhood hang ups, and we end up carrying them with us....well, forever.  That is, unless we become very cognizant of them, and through severe introspection or other more meaningful experiences, grow into something stronger, and better.

In other words, if our parents broke our trust, we finally meet someone one day that proves to us through words and actions, that trusting is indeed an ok choice to make.

Or we find a way to understand that it's ok to let go of the demons that plagued us in our youth, and that the only way to be resurrected into something greater is to actually do so.

As we do grow and become adults, we alone are responsible for our choices, and decisions.  One of the biggest problems I see we do as adults is that we constantly justify our shitty behavior, or that we react back harshly to being hurt by the people we love.

The two seem to go hand in hand.  Someone we care about does something, or says something awful to us, and suddenly we feel very justified in returning our own nice neatly wrapped bundle of hate and malice.  Usually far surpassing what it was they presented us with in the first place.  It's not good enough to just talk like adults, or make rational decisions.  What we really must do, is try our very best to pull the insides out of that person, through their mouth and asshole simultaneously, until they writhe and hurt and "feel our pain".

You ever have a buddy hit you in the arm, and it hurt?  In order to show him how hard he hit you, and how much pain he inflicted on you, you really hit him back about 7,549 times harder...because "that's how much it hurt."

Emotionally, we do the same thing when someone we care about hurts us.  We need to hit them back much harder than they hit us.  Because we need to show them, you know, how much they hurt us.  When in fact, we really just inflame the situation, and add more things that will need to be overcome after the drama dies down and cooler heads prevail (if that happens).

As adults, we are shaped by our experiences as kids....in our youth.  However, most of us become emotionally and mentally mature enough to know we have the ability to let go of the things we feel we've been wronged about.  To let go of the awful experiences that misshapen our soul.  It's not always easy, it's not always clear on how to do it.  But forgiving and understand that we have all the power in the matter through choice can be a powerful start.

After all, we all lift weights because we desire to be strong.  Well, forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  The weak can never forgive.