Forgiveness

I was having a bad headache due to the extreme hot weather yesterday. As soon as my dad is done with the healing, he reminded me to contact his uncle (which I call uncle too) for the change of venue for the wedding ceremony. With that as the topic, I asked him softly, "he's your uncle but you never treated him as one. Why?"

And so he told me about the story, which happened way before I was born.

This is my dad's version-
My dad used to be his uncle's assistant. He'd helped him with the letter typing works while maintaining teaching tuition as his main job and get paid accordingly. One day my dad realized some commission which his uncle claimed have not arrived was actually received and recorded. He felt cheated as his uncle always tell him he has yet to receive the payment. As his uncle walked through the door and noticed my dad was actually looking into his documents' cabinet, he asked my dad, "why did you simply open my cabinet?" My dad answered, "because I need to find some information for the letter I'm working on." His uncle continued, "you can always do that when I come back, and not simply open the cabinet without my permission."

Dad got angry and replied, "is it because of the privacy, or is it because you have something to hide from me, such as the payment that you claimed you have not received?" His uncle also got angry and shouted back, "I'm your uncle, it's even my choice and authority if I refuse to pay you!"

And so with that bad temper of both running into the middle of the scene, the conversation broke down and my dad walked away by saying, "We're done here. I will not work for you anymore." He went back to his tuition work from then on but little did he know that his uncle was still angry with him. So when some customers asked about my dad when they saw his uncle instead, he will say with anger, "he thinks he's old enough to be on his own, quited from my place and got independent!"

As some customers met my dad and repeated, "I heard that you're doing your own business now! That's good, can you find this offer for me? It should not exceed this amount." My dad was pretty upset about the treatment he got from his uncle and so he tried.

As a result, he got the deal with a better price and his uncle got even angrier claiming this niece has stolen his customers. As he walked the house's door, he complained to my grandmother and my god-grandmother that my dad tried to hit him in the public. My dad got home later, knowing that his uncle was actually telling a lie he asked his uncle, "was it me trying to hit you or you trying to do that instead?" His uncle got offended and grabbed a hockey stick by his side and swinged it at my dad. My dad blocked that whack with a stool. The stool was broken and my dad holding two of its leg pointing at his uncle's ribs and said, "You're done today. We are done from now on!"

And so they never talk to each other since then until today. However, he's agreed to invite his uncle to my wedding and said to me, "I will never allow that if I am still holding grudge against him."

My dad may no longer be hating his uncle for what he has done, but does that mean he has forgiven him?

And I told my dad, "the scene that you mentioned just now reminded me of something - you've done something similar to your uncle too. You were holding a mop stick instead of a hockey stick and you swinged the stick too like your uncle did. The difference was: you blocked the hit from your uncle with a stool, whereas the one hitted by you never fought back, not even run away from you. The person that you hitted with a mop stick and that piece of wood immediately broke into two is me."

He asked with denial, "when have I ever hitted you with a stick?"

I told him the incident and apparently he can't remember a thing about it.

So I said to my dad, "one thing that grandma kept repeating while she's alive was: patience. One without patience will always end up doing things that are hurtful to others and things that the person might probably regret later."

When anger hits, we're blind. We all know we can never be avoided from making mistakes but we can make a habit to constantly monitor and be aware of our thought and action. And when we moved on from the past, forgiveness is very important to us.

Only by forgiving ourselves and also others we can really move on.