Find yourself facing bitterness and grudges that seem to sour your view on the world around you? May I offer letting it go as a course of action.
You can’t hurt me with the things that you do
I’ll pick up dandelions and I’ll give them to you!
from “Love Makes the World Go Round” x The PowerPuff Girls S1E22 (1999)
What do you sacrifice when you choose to get your lick back? Who is in control when everyone is moving from a place of pride, fear, and ego? How full can relationships be when everyone is preemptively shielding themselves from harm by being the first one to swing?
The answer, my friends, is in a more succinct question: how willing are we to let go in a world that views forgiveness as an act of weakness, not love?
The world tells us to get your lick back. The world tells us if they hit you, you hit them back. The world even tells us to hit them first. The world tells us that everyone is dangerous, everyone is out to get you, and that no one is trustworthy. But in reality, the PowerPuff Girls were right. Love makes the world go round!
To start, there’s the love you have for yourself to release you from the bondage of trying to play God! It’s not our job to teach anyone a lesson. It’s not our job to act as judge, jury, and executioner. The person who harmed you is not your responsibility to discipline. If a conversation is not available to you as a medium of recovery, you can choose to remove yourself. It’s not easy, or natural. But it helps put you in a direction toward healing and restoration within yourself if reconciliation is not available to you and the person who caused you harm.
If you don’t choose to let go and instead cling to the bitterness of offense, you expose yourself to an ongoing cycle of pain, trauma, and the everlasting reopening of wounds that want nothing more than to heal. But they can’t do that if you’re always on defense, always trying to teach somebody else a lesson, always trying to force someone to understand what they did to you was wrong.
I had to understand that some people will never come back to say sorry. Some people will never understand that what they did to you was wrong and just how much it harmed you. You can do all types of things to them and demand of them the respect, dignity, and heartfelt apology you always deserved but the reality is it may never come! Then what? You certainly can’t let that hold you back forever.
Forgiveness is the key that you and you alone hold in your hand that will unlock true healing. Move past the ego, move past the voice of the world around you, and choose to forgive so that you can heal and move on.
Thalia, 25, was obsessed with Power Puff Girls as a child and carries its lessons to this day.
