She spat out her apology like phlegm, only to feel her unrepentant anger build to new and distasteful heights.
Writing this sentence has brought to mind how I feel about the questionable wisdom that by forgiving someone of a wrong done to us, we are freeing ourselves rather than the other person. I suppose it depends on whether or not we can believe we are truly forgiving.
The other popular adage is “forgive and forget.” Sometimes forgetting is much easier on the soul than forgiving. But does it teach us anything?
If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that I occasionally have problems with my eyes. I’ve tried eating carrots – that worked for a while. I tried Lutein, same thing. I tried drinking more water, I watched my sugar intake, I went to the doctor and an optometrist… The dietary stuff worked for a while, the professionals had no idea. I got a very slightly different prescription from the eye doctor which I’ve never bothered to fill. Actually putting on my glasses helps, sometimes.
With all of these temporary solutions that seem to work when I expect them to, I’ve become convinced that it’s stress. Mind over matter. I’ll start a journal to see when I lose my eyesight the most (this morning was bad) but rather than concentrating on what I’m consuming, I’ll keep track of what I’m doing or have planned. At the moment I’ve got to look forward to having all the kids home for two weeks until school starts. On top of that, my mother is bored at the retirement home and wants to come over… where she’ll spend the day getting stressed over my youngest son Alex’s screaming and teasing her, which in turn stresses me out.
Yeah. Looking at it in (hazy) black and white makes it look all the more logical, don’t you agree?
A few weeks back I was delighted to discover there was an hashtag on Twitter – #1lineWed – that I thought would be nice to use for our weekly prompt of the same name here on WordPress. I spoke to the lady who, I assume, came up with the hashtag. It turned out that it was in use as a prompt for writers to post one line of their work-in-progress on Twitter. The “owner” of the hashtag and I discussed it and came to the conclusion that the more the hashtag was used, the more exposure both our prompts would receive. Good for everyone, right?
However, the “users” of #1lineWed have other ideas. I keep getting complaints that I’m using it wrong – that it’s not for me because I don’t participate in the prompt they’re used to seeing. For instance, this tweet (directly quoted) I received this morning:
in case you didn’t know, this # is for writers to share there lines and there is a theme each week.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the hassle of getting chewed out by people who think they own the hashtag. Therefore, I will be changing the “rules” of One-Liner Wednesday once again.
I’ll take suggestions on a hashtag that won’t infringe on anyone else’s ownership rights. One that we can share not only amongst ourselves but with the world in general. Because we’re nice like that. Please leave your ideas in the comments below – if there are enough, maybe we’ll do a poll next week and vote on it. 😀
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