The Age of Learning Forgiveness

As time passes, we believe we have grown up.
But do we really grow?
No—we simply learn to feel more:
pain, joy, loss, forgiveness.

A child always remains within us—
one who laughs, weeps, loves, and gets hurt.
And those who hurt us, they too are children at heart.

See, a four- or five-year-old can strike a six- or seven-month-old without meaning to,
and so grown people wound each other—unknowingly, thoughtlessly.
Neither bears the blame,
yet someone suffers all the same.

You once wrote—
"How can those who have never struggled to live ever understand?"
You understand.
You are that six- or seven-month-old child,
and those who hurt you, perhaps they are merely like that four- or five-year-old.

Life, maybe, is this exchange of ages and wounds.
Sometimes we inflict them,
sometimes we bear them.
In the end, life teaches us—'forgiveness'. Both the giving and the asking.

Once we were small. We made small mistakes. Our elders forgave us then. Now we must forgive them their larger ones. Must we not?
And children—we must forgive them always.
They don't understand.

And how to hold such things in life, you wrote some time ago—
"This is it—
standing in the kitchen
gripping the knife...
until anger dissolves into breath and becomes still.
These are ordinary moments—
but they demand extraordinary courage."

May you always be that person of courage,
in your writing, in your silence, in yourself.

What can I ask of the Creator for you on your birthday?
I asked the Creator
that even after all of life's exhaustion,
may the peace of writing never leave you.

I wish for your path through life to be easier.