Waiting Is The Hardest Work Of Hope.

Happy People Are Not Their Own Enemies, Do Not Carry On An Endless War With Their Souls. We May Be Fiercely At Odds With The Wrongs Of The World Around Us. But Inside Ourselves, Near The Core, If We Are Happy, We Are At Peace.

You And I Were Created For Joy, And If We Miss It We Miss The Reason For Our Existence. If Our Joy Is Honest Joy, It Must Somehow Be Congruous With Human Tragedy. This Is The Test Of Joy's Integrity. It Is Compatible With Pain. Only The Heart That Hurts Has A Right To Joy.

With A Little Time, And A Little More Insight, We Begin To See Both Ourselves And Our Enemies In Humbler Profiles. We Are Not Really As Innocent As We Felt When We Were First Hurt. And We Do Not Usually Have A Gigantic Monster To Forgive; We Have A Weak, Needy, And Somewhat Stupid Human Being. When You See Your Enemy And Yourself In The Weakness And Silliness Of The Humanity You Share, You Will Make The Miracle Of Forgiving A Little Easier.

Can You Stop Your Memory On A Dime, Put It In Reverse, And Spin It In Another Direction The Way You Can Reverse Direction On A Tape Recorder? We Cannot Forget On Command. So We Just Have To Let The Forgetting Happen As It Will; We Shouldn't Rush It, And We Certainly Should Not Doubt The Genuineness Of Our Forgiving If We Happen To Remember. The Really Important Thing Is That We Have The Power To Forgive What We Still Do Remember.

I Worry About Fast Forgivers. They Tend To Forgive Quickly In Order To Avoid Their Pain. Or They Forgive Fast In Order To Get An Advantage Over The People They Forgive. And Their Instant Forgiving Only Makes Things Worse... People Who Have Been Wronged Badly And Wounded Deeply Should Give Themselves Time And Space Before They Forgive... There Is A Right Moment To Forgive. We Cannot Predict It In Advance; We Can Only Get Ourselves Ready For It When It Arrives... Don't Do It Quickly, But Don't Wait Too Long.