The Lesson I Keep Failing

What if you could put life on pause?

Just for a while. Take the bitterness, the worries, the misunderstandings, all the hard things, and put them away in a deep drawer. Close it. Step outside into the sun.

It would be warm there. Pleasant. No weight, no pain.

But memory doesn't allow that.

Memory is the most painful and the most merciless part of us. It keeps what is most precious and what is most bitter, side by side, and it won't let us simply step over them and walk on. Day after day it brings them back, until the tears run dry and we finally learn the lesson by heart.

The easy lessons pass quickly. They are light and pleasant, and we get used to them in no time, like a clear day in May you want to live again and again. But they are short.

The hard lessons are different. They are like a splinter. They hurt without end, day and night, and they never let you forget. They sting with every breath. And they last forever, or at least it feels that way. As if the universe keeps trying to explain something very important to me, and I, like a struggling child in the back of the classroom, still can't learn it.

Some time ago I came across a phrase that held me hostage for a long time:

You only have to forgive once. Hatred is daily work.

I keep coming back to it. And I think I finally see what it is pointing at.

Maybe the most important lesson is learning to forgive. Not other people.

Myself.

That foolish child who still hasn't managed to learn her lesson. Who keeps failing the same test. Who is still sitting at the desk long after everyone else has gone home.

Maybe she doesn't need another lesson.

Maybe she just needs someone to finally tell her she can stop.

Is there a lesson you keep failing, a thing you can't forgive yourself for? You don't have to tell me what it is. You can simply tell me it's there.

With love, from HerWay

If this story touched you

The Weight You Learn to CarryThe First Time I Chose Myself

← Previous story  ·  Next story →  ·  Back to the Journal