The One Where We Learn Forgiveness

The human being by default searches for forgiveness when it feels it has done something wrong, indirectly or directly, to someone else; Judith Fein's trip to Vietnam is proof of that.  She escapes from America to Europe during the war and goes to Paris where the negotiations are more thriving. But even after the war is over she feels a need to verify that Vietnam is indeed okay.

1) "Do you mean you really have no resentment against us?" I asked again and again.

     "No," was the answer. "You are forgiven."

     It was an enormous relief to know that Vietnam has survived our war and is thriving. It was reassuring to learn life has moved on, and even when a country is bombed, defoliated, and destroyed, it can come back with great vigor. I was humbled by a people who have suffered so much and have chosen forgiveness over fury.

I feel that this quote embodies both Judith Fein's necessity for forgiveness but also, almost a need to HAVE someone place blame and be angry at American's. She often cannot understand how the Vietnamese can be so forgiving of the people who caused such suffering and pain in a needless war.

2)  The fact that the Vietnamese can forgive Americans caused me to look at myself and how I feel about people who have hurt or offended me.

Here we reach the whole point of her trip to Vietnam, finding forgiveness. In this quote we see not only her acceptance of the Forgiveness from the people of Vietnam, but the realization that she herself could learn to forgive. Forgiving is an essential part of human life and not necessarily for the forgiven.  It allows the person to move on, not necessarily to forget the grievance but it gives you a sense of peace; of letting go.

3) I understood that I could spend a lifetime harboring anger and resentment, or I could accept what happened to me and move on. It felt good to be in the present. It felt good not to focus on the past. It felt right to unplug from past hurts and bitterness.

What comes in to play here is an example of what I explained in the previous quote. By letting go and forgiving the wrong doings of others against her she was able to move on, to feel at peace with herself and where she was in life. Often the reason we fight against forgiving someone is because we are not ready to accept what has happened to us. Because forgiving someone means accepting that the horrible thing actually did happen, it means learning to live with what happened  but to let go of the pain the situation caused.

 In class, Professor Pittmann mentioned how we could connect this reading to a song or artist that proteste against the war in Vietnam. Well I chose to do something a little different than that, I am choosing to connect to a whole movie that came out 41 years after the end of the war but is based around the late 1960's. It is titled Across the Universe.

The movie is written around songs from The Beatles albums and it tells the story through the different characters of the story. It covers the last years of the Vietnam War by sending one of the characters to war, he was drafted in contrast to his sisters ex-boyfriend who enlisted. When he is officially shipped out she joins the people in America in their organization of protests against the war. I wont get into too much detail so you can enjoy the movie, which honestly is amazing but when your seeing you wonder if the director and writers were on really bad acid because of the colorful visual and aesthetics.

As always I shall end this on a song, so good bye ladies, gents and celestial beings.

The One Where I Volunteer As Tribute

Hunger Games joke aside, I did volunteer to be a part of the staff for the 8th Annual Student Research and Writing Conference. This was simultaneously something new AND not new to me as my junior and senior year of High School consisted of volunteering in a club at my school that organized activities for underprivileged children. And yet it was my first time seeing the other side of one of these conferences and seeing how quickly things can go wrong and how quickly it can be fixed by the creativity of our brilliant  professors and their bright volunteers. I couldn't volunteer as much time as I actually wanted because I had a LOT of assignments to finish (and begin) and an exam to study for plus my classes obviously but what little time I was there was awesome. My friend Natalia was volunteering at the same hours I was so I stuck close to her and we got assigned with another girl to the registration table. It was a fun 3 hours between finding metaphors for our grumbling stomachs, singing along to the clarinet players practicing outside and me geeking out when I got a text from amazon saying the book I ordered was arriving a couple of days earlier than I anticipated. Of course my geeking out was mostly because it's the libretto for Hamilton with annotations from Lin Manuel Miranda and the story behind the creation of the musical. It still brings an imaginary tear to my eye when I think about it, it HUGE by the way; no wonder Lin described it as a Tome you can buy it  here 
if you share my obsession with Hamilton and yes, I am listening to the soundtrack right now.

I mean come on! Look at it! Its gorgeous!

BUT BACK TO THE POINT

We spent our time listening to music while we told people the instructions about the registration and evaluation papers and handed out pamphlets. Before we knew it it was 10:30am and we all had to leave to our respective engagements, but we did come back at 1pm for our classmates presentation.

It was amazing.

 I mean I thought we had seen everything in class already but I don't know why, seeing a representative of each group collaborating to make this one great presentation made it all come together in a way that made me appreciate Jung's intellect during his travels in a new way. Yes my classmates were nervous but they did and AMAZING job and kudos to them for having the guts to get up on that stage. I commend you for your bravery. I hope to one day have that bravery and not succumb to a panic attack at the thought of it.

With this I bid you adieu ladies, gents and celestial beings and I leave you with a message that goes with the song whose lyrics are pictured in the collage above and I shall link in this post:

If you ever feel like things are not going your way, like everyone is miles ahead of you be it academically, emotionally, mentally or economically: take your time, and Wait for It, your moment will come. It took me two years to come to terms with the fact that I have to leave behind people I love to be able to get what I want, and now while my friends are halfway through their Bachelors Degree I am about to start basically from scratch because I finally found what I was meant to do and that's why this song brings tears to my eyes when I hear it.