Don’t touch that dial! This is one message you are going to want to hear.
What if I told you there is a product on the market that does the following:
- It will instantly change your life for the better.
- It will take excess weight off your shoulders without giving up dessert or even dieting.
- You will experience an immediate euphoric high without ingesting a single drug.
- It is organic, all natural, toxin free, no additives on any kind.
- Many experience fewer wrinkles and a magical glow without the application of unctuous creams or greasy ointments.
- Most report increased healthy flora in their intestines and have been spotted merrily singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” when emerging from the bathroom in record time.
- You will sleep better with no midnight fretting and wake refreshed and inspired.
- It comes with no obligation and a money back guarantee.
- More than a money back guarantee it may well keep you from wasting money.
So who needs a product like this? Let’s check.
Do you ever experience one or more of the following maladies:
- You open a sentence “I hate… when describing a family member, friend or stranger.
- You are carrying a grudge for forty years, like when Aunt Petunia neglected to send you a card on your birthday.
- You unfriend an acquaintance of 20 years because he supports a candidate you dislike.
- You think you’re so great! (Oh wait, skip that one, that’s a good thing…if you really are).
- Anything or anybody that requires forgiveness.
Okay! I understand we can’t love everybody. There is a level of evil so vile, an act of hatred so egregious or an individual so devoid of empathy and compassion (you can’t swing a cat in Washington, DC, without hitting one of those) that there is just no room in your heart to forgive.
Yet unbelievable acts of forgiveness happen frequently. We recently saw the family of a murder victim offer forgiveness to his convicted killer at the sentencing hearing. (Most of the family, not all). So where do we draw the line? Simple answer: your decision? No getting around the old free will Mortimer.
May I make a suggestion? Go ahead and let it all go. But if through your own superpowers you are able to resist my irrefutable logic, then forgive those that keep revisiting your thoughts and interrupt your sleep at night. Yes, those are the ones you find it hardest to understand but remember, you are only troubling yourself. Those you hate either never give you a thought or take great pleasure in upsetting you with their actions. If you can let those go the rest are easy.
The lesson here is one we see repeated throughout our lives. One clearly related by Matthew Broderick “WarGames” (1983). “The only way to win is not to play.”