“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
–Anne Lamott
I recently saw an interview with Anne Lamott wherein she shared her myriad idiosyncrasies, neuroses and anxieties.
While she shared many things throughout her hour-long conversation with her host, Dean Nelson, the thread that stuck with me at the end was her ruthless honesty.
At times I wished she would just stop, but had she done so I would have been hurt.
Anne Lamott sharing her hurts gave me permission once more to acknowledge and be with my own.
As a writer, her honesty says that I can be human and the world will not fall apart.
Why does Armageddon have to occur when I am not perfect?
At another point in the interview, Anne says, “I’m an extremely nervous case and a person with awful lot an anxiety.” I can also and extremely agree with this statement too.
All parts of me resonate with Anne’s quote in a way of which I am not proud, but totally happy that she could put words to what I refuse to admit at times when it would benefit me to say out loud.
Has writing fiction made me a better liar, one who has developed the ability to fool even myself that I’m not as bad, nor as good as I am and would like to think or hope?
I do not know. But I suspect that I have come to it and return each day or every other because I am hurting.
I am confused. I want to know, the secret of life, happiness, joy, survival and the ability to endure with grace and humility. But alas, no one has ever figured out the answers to these questions of life immemorial.
And no one ever will.
…giving up hope of ever having a better past…
What happens when we give up hope of having a better future?
What is that?
Perhaps it is when we reach peace, the moment wherein we recognize the definition of enough.