The Power of Forgiveness

History can be viewed as one long, bitter battle.  Thousands of
years of personal battles, ethnic wars, religious wars, political
wars.  Thousands of years of atrocities, genocides, and ethnic
cleansings.

And pretty much no country, no religion, or no ethnicity has
been exempt from inflicting these horrors on others, and from
being on the receiving end of such atrocities.

Whatever your race, religion, or nationality, rest assured your
ancestors suffered greatly themselves and inflicted great suffering
on others.  That's the way the world was, and that's the way the
world still is.

While you may not be proud of some things your ancestors did in
the past, you must also look at why they did what they did, and how
the actions turned out over a longer period of time. . .and judge
the actions that oppressed your ancestors by how they turned out
over time as well.

None of us are our ancestors.  We are individuals, free to learn from
the past, and free to change ourselves and the world.

But we can't change if we can't forgive that which happened in the past.

If we can't release our guilt over what our ancestors did, even though we
played no part in it, we can never understand and be happy in the present.

If we can't release our hate over what happened to our ancestors in the
past, even though we can never get even with the ones who caused the
pain, we're bound to live in bitterness in the present.

We cannot change what happened in the past.  We can only try to
understand it, learn from it, forgive it, and try to improve the future
from our knowledge of the past.

Today, in our world, there are still religious fundamentalists determined
to kill or conquer other sects or religions based on centuries old slights,
grudges, defeats, and atrocities, and in the single-minded quest to install
their religion as the one, true Religion.  There are still political despots
whose goal is still to control and take over other people and other countries.

If we can't forgive the past and learn from its lessons how to recognize
the true dangers of our time, we are going to face some very dark times
again in the future.

We must recognize that we are not our ancestors.  We are more than our
ethnicity or our nationality or our religion.  We are individuals.  We are
individuals lucky enough to be born in a country that values our
individuality and our individual rights.

For all its faults, our country is still the beacon of freedom to a world
that is suffocating in despotism.  Learn to forgive a history that is less
than perfection, and continue to evolve toward a more perfect union.

Learn to appreciate what you've got before you lose it.