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.