The F Word

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— M A R I O   L I A N I

Forgiveness—an act that has become as foreign + concealed as "the f word" yet a word that is rarely uttered as often as the inappropriate word is. Instead, forgiveness is suppressed as a gateway to vulnerability + a blow to the ego. How dare that lover who broke your heart, that father who abandoned you, or even that man who cut across you in the grocery line ask for your forgiveness? 

Forgiveness is the "fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it"; it is the ability to see through compassion. Our inability to do so becomes a blackened cauldron in which we simmer then burn away in our anger. Unspoken words tie our throat into knots, shackling us to a state unforgiving of our own emotional needs and freedom of choice. Forgiveness is a choice—we are free to either succumb to the acts of others upon us and hate them or surrender to the path those acts take us on and free ourselves. The world or people do not come at us when we recognise that our world comes from within us + our perceptions. 

These perceptions ebb and flow like waves, coming in as storms to overcome our egotistical tendencies or in epiphanic little moments. Forgiveness is an algebra; sometimes, it's as simple as two plus two and a formulaic labyrinth in others. Nonetheless, we sit and solve . . . and we slowly unlock the shackles that we have placed on our own limbs.