Good morning, forgiveness (Repost from FB)

So as per usual, my brain is inspired by the random-est stuff, at random-est times, such as when one is all dusty and smelly trying to pack (too many) stuff into her luggage =)

I'm not a big fan of rock music, other than when I'm running or driving (very chi gek!) but I found out it's pretty awesome to be able to bop your head to the beats when you are packing, haha. Switchfoot was on my Youtube playlist today, thanks to a friend's share on FB (power of social media baybeh!), and 100 songs, no need to press repeat (Y!)

The song "Mess of Me" spoke to me quite loudly, I felt the need to speak to you, yes, you who are reading this.

Being compassionate is a bloody.hard.task. There's every other factor telling you not to - "life's not fair", "why me", "it's so tiring", "but" etc. etc. and almost very fewreasons to.

And honestly, there is a chance for "compassion burnout" when we are compassionate with everyone else BUT ourselves.

Yet sometimes, that's the person we need to be compassionate too, first.

For the mistakes we've done.

For the mistakes we did not do.

The song spoke about how a person has made a mess and wants to reverse this tragedy, wanting to live life fully alive and that no one can do that but him or herself. 

One paragraph spoke particularly to me:

We lock our souls in cages,

We hide inside our shells,

It's hard to free the ones you love,

Oh, when you can't forgive yourself,

Yeah, forgive yourself

It's difficult to forgive someone else. It's 10X more difficult to forgive yourself when you effed up. Especially when in a million years you never thought you would eff up like that, no, not you.

Then guess what, it's sure to happen to you. Never say never. Like really.

But if you can't forgive yourself, who can?

And in the midst of your self-awareness which spiralled into a form of self-focused-pity, all you can think is how bad the situation is, rather than how you can reach out and make it better.

I love Randy Pausch's quote"A bad apology is worse than no apology".

The world's full of too many already-said-sorry's-now-just-give-me-forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not an entitlement.

Forgiveness is earned, for yourself, from yourself. 

So reach out. There's only that much that time can silent. 

There's only so much self-blame.

There's only that many sorry-s before it turn stale and rots of insincerity.

Nothing says forgiveness more than effort, and you'll probably feel better you are doing something about it, like finally.

No one guarantees the outcome of effort, heck, no one guarantees the outcome of anything anyway.

But you want to try, because if you don't, suddenly you find yourself adding another sentence to your "Why I should not be forgiven list".

Please, we need to start striking things off that list.

Say sorry to yourself, work on changing that sorry-for-yourself energy to let's-make-the-world-better.

And no, I don't think that's airy fairy.

Compassion can change so much.

It's not easy though, and that's why it's worth it.

Good morning, forgiveness =)

P.S: For more practical acts of compassion and/or forgiveness, do what you do best, Google. Haha.