It seems to me that life has two components…. what happened and the story we tell ourselves about what happened. Though the way we remember facts may be perfect, it is always tinged by our perception and emotions. So, our perception, emotion stained facts become a story that we tell ourselves, our friends, lovers, spouses and in time our children… who are already busy working on their own stories.
In our stories about our life the problems are always someone else's fault. Imagine that! The more we think about and tell our stories the more real they become until finally, to us, they become, not the story but the fact. Forgiveness becomes difficult, if not impossible, because we have become so entrenched in our story about what happened that we forget the other people involved are just that… people… imperfect and destined to make mistakes. Incredibly, they have their life stories too and in their stories, we are wrong.
Ultimately our primary goal becomes not to live our lives, but to be right about our life stories. And thus, we give up living in favor of being right.
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