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A sharp definition of forgiveness: "To forgive is to recognize the essential innocence that's at the center of us.  It's an acknowledgement of our true nature,, above and beyond the separate self".

"Grievances are generated by the ego.  Ego self seeks power by holding judgement and wanting others to change. Authentic self seeks power by looking for appropriate responsibility.  The natural outgrow of that is to get understanding.  Energy saved from anger is now freed up for more creative use".

"Forgiveness takes away power from the ego, therefore, the ego generates resistance against it"

at the heart of the creation of anger, rests on two "peculiar" beliefs.  1. "We know what's best for other people.  "  2. "we can expect them to change because we know what's best".

Forgiveness-authentic self generated.

+1 , the same can be applied to history, memoirs, and psychology (living 1,000 lives)

"Jack's name was a sharp reminder and a challenge. The reminder: I will die—maybe from cancer, maybe on the fireground—but my own tower inscription will also become an epitaph. The challenge: to savor the well-being anyway, to revel in the fact that life is transitory. There is "stern joy" in saying aloud "I could die today," thus banishing self-pity, worry, whining. They are pointless, and a waste of precious, limited energy. If death is the "foeman," it is truly worthy of my steel, because the ever-present potential of death's manifestation catalyzes the life force. So after a brief pause I pounded out another lap, thrilled by the power of my biceps femoris. A year has passed since that autumn afternoon on the fire tower. I've ascended over 450 times. I cannot say that on every single lap I've noted Jack and the exhilaration of my demise. But often, at least, I recognize the pleasing paradox. As my heart drums in my ears with the staccato rhythm of aerobic vigor and I gorge on the vibrancy of forest, lakes, and clouds, I am rushing upward toward death. I hope to make it a good one."

" wildland fire fighting mainly sucks too—it's 90 percent drudgery and tedium. But the other 10 percent is a beguiling blend of joy, terror, honor, and love that can reliably provide the peak experiences of a lifetime. Often the work is even useful. A prominent factor in the fire service equation is comradeship. Shared suffering and shared triumph are sturdy bonding agents, and a good fire crew doing good work is a happy band, an extended family of cousins that cares for its own and laughs a lot. I reappear for the punishment season after season because the inevitable pain—both physical and emotional—is eclipsed by the zest of fellowship sweetened by hardship and combat. I'm also paid. "

from "Trails by Wildfire", reflections of a career fire chief.

"But it's good to be expendable. Sometimes I can't bear the thought of being safe. I volunteer. Send me to your fires. Fly me into smoke and wind, and trees that grab for rotor blades. I'll save your pulpwood and lumber. I'll defend the fiber that makes the tissue that blows your nose and wipes your ass. Why not? It's better than living a normal life. You need me. Societies—ancient and
modern, democratic and tyrannical—dictate that someone has to be expendable. Pick me; I volunteer."

We are expendable. And yes, we are party to it. We acquiesce and even cooperate in the promotion of our own potential doom. Fatalism. It springs from the mindset: Can Do. We are warriors and we can beat this fire, any fire. If we fail it's our fault. And keep in mind that heroes do not fail.

Death before dishonor.
/ could not love thee, Dear, so much Loved I not Honor more."

"On our way back to Seagull 56BH could crash through the canopy in a fury of Jet-A flame. Fatalism. It's not a hopeless outlook, but an affirmation of the present. I was, unexpectedly, a firefighter— an airborne firefighter—on a mission, and I relished the privilege. My good fortune christened the day, and I savored the redolent pine and fir; appreciated the rough texture of the rock, warmed by June sunlight; relished the taste of the cooling breeze from over blue water. I had flown into the wilderness, sharing the sky with ravens and eagles, and fate, of course, was free to have her way. At that moment I could conceive of no complaints, "in balance with this life, this death." When 56BH appeared over the treeline, preceded by the distant hum of turbine and rotors, I was ready to go or stay, to live or die—whatever. "

"We are expendable because we are warriors. It's not that we're sacrificial victims or cannon fodder, like human bridges across barbed wire in the horror of a World War I battlefield. We are
more coddled than that. Rather, it's because we know the joy of forgetting, the altered state of mind that comfortably ignores the self; and that which is forgotten or ignored is expendable. The British soldier-poet Wilfred Owen, while immersed in the mindless brutality of trench warfare in 1918, produced what is arguably the most potent and wrenching (and beautiful) antiwar poetry ever written. Yet he also won the Military Cross for heroism in combat, and in a letter home he wrote about the particular battle where he "lost all earthly faculties, and fought like an angel." On fire, I have been there. I do not place myself and my comrades in a league with Owen, for as he wrote of his fellow soldiers, "Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not." But I know how to fight like an angel. At Poplar Lake, and hundreds of other blazes, I traversed the fireground like a disembodied spirit, focused only on the struggle, on the flow of the attack, on the heady geometry of tactics and logistics, and on the faces of my firefighters. Were we in danger? Yes. Could we have been injured or killed? Yes. Did we care? No. In TheArtofWar, Sun-tzu quotes The Book of Changes, the I ching: "In happiness at overcoming difficulties, people forget the danger of death." In the tumult of initial attack you are outside the self. Fear and courage are irrelevant. There is no pain nor apprehension of disaster; for a time, at least, there is only joy and vitality.

But like soldiers, we are expendable. We stand between society and a perceived menace, and it is implicitly understood that there will be casualties. Society doesn't expect to lose car dealers, beauticians, or Wai-mart greeters in the line of duty, but a certain number of firefighters are disposable. And just as soldiers don't serve for the sake of Bosnia (or Kuwait, or South Vietnam), we don't risk our health and safety for vegetation, or even for buildings. We do it for the joy, and to temporarily abandon the self and fight like angels."

• Don’t wait 20 years to have a real conversation with the people you love.

• Don’t wait 20 years to say sorry.

• Don’t wait 20 years to forgive.

• Don’t wait 20 years to ask for forgiveness

• And, most important, don’t wait 20 years to tell the people you love that you love them.

I love you all. I forgive you all. I ask for your forgiveness.

Thank you all again for coming.

Stephen Levine put this beautifully in his book A Year to Live, “We cannot feign gratitude any more than we can pretend forgiveness. Gratitude is a way of seeing, of being."

“Joy tolerates no isolation,”  Kast writes. “Joy is the emotion that lets down our guard, for better or worse. Joy opens us up. . . . Joy is the state in which we are least likely to reflect on ourselves. In the moment of delight, we are; there is nothing we have to do . . . when we are joyful, we feel self-confident and accept ourselves, knowing that our existence is not a matter of indifference. To put it the other way around, when we accept ourselves, we are likely to be delighted in and feel accepted by the world, experiencing an affinity with that which transcends us, with other persons, and with the spiritual.”

It’s interesting that when I ask people in the throes of terminal illness to talk about what elicited joy in their past, a remarkable thing often occurs. Even if they’re suffering, as they recall events in their childhood their expression changes: they smile and sometimes laugh aloud.

It is not unusual for people who are terminally ill to experience this state of joy when death is close. Each moment and each human interaction becomes precious. People who are dying don’t take things for granted. In the naked honesty and vulnerability that accompanies proximity to death, even seemingly inconsequential interactions—or simply the presence of another person—can be revealed for the miraculous gifts that they are. Gratitude and joy are intimately fused, and practicing gratitude is a sure way to bring joy into our lives.

People at the end of life can seem to lose themselves in the past. They feel drawn as if by gravity to the density and richness of their accumulated life experience. They often express intense gratitude about their lives and for the people they have known. An old French proverb says, “Gratitude is the heart’s memory.” In gratitude we celebrate who we are to one another and the ways in which our lives have been shaped and moved by each other.

People who are dying seem to grasp the abundance of their life experience. Even as life is slipping away, even as they face ultimate loss, people can feel filled with grace and love. This aspect of dying—this actual, attainable sense of completion and deep peace—is especially common to people who have family support that includes humane, loving palliative care.

“At first I felt ashamed for my part in keeping them away. As I opened our home to them, someplace within me opened as well,” said Arlene. “The distrust and low-grade animosity I’d always felt for my stepfather eased. For the first time I was able to stand outside ‘my own story’ and look at the history of our family from his perspective. And for the first time I understood how much he really and truly loved my mom. To protect her from his own kids! Then I realized how much I had lost in holding myself aloof and apart from him and my stepsiblings.

I said, ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t know you and your brothers before now. I feel like it’s my fault.’ I watched as tears poured down her cheeks. I started bawling, too, got up, and hugged her.”

Gratitude was the vehicle for Arlene’s journey from being the victim of a fractured family to feeling part of a family that was healthy and whole. In allowing herself to feel gratitude to Conrad for his unwavering love and devotion to her mother, the walls of anger that separated Arlene from Conrad and her stepsiblings dissolved. With her defenses down, Arlene suddenly felt thankful for all the things he had done for her mother, and she was surprised at the love she felt for him. In the course of Conrad’s dying, Arlene gained the stepfather she never realized she had, and in the process she also discovered two brothers and a sister she will have for the rest of her life.

Arlene observed, “I wish I hadn’t waited so long, but it took Conrad’s dying for me to discover that I really have a family.”

I asked Gunter how his father’s gift of touch had affected him.

“Every time I think about it I feel a rush of gratitude and love,” Gunter said. “The sadness at his death is there, but so is this intense joy at the ways in which we were able to connect in those final days.”

There was nothing romantic—in any sense of the word—about the care that Gunter gave to his father. But there is no denying that it was a physical expression of love. So, too, was his father’s request to Gunter, and his receptivity to Gunter’s loving touch.

We can learn a lot about caring for frail, elderly people from the way we care for infants who are entirely dependent on us.

A crying infant in the emergency department is not merely examined for physical problems: the baby is held and rocked. We reflexively hold and touch infants not

merely to relieve their suffering, but to elicit pleasure. There is no reason why we cannot do the same for people who are physically dependent on us at the end of life.

In fact, the phrase tender, loving care is the sine qua non of excellence in caring. It’s true for every culture. Excellent medical care for dying people is essential, but it is not sufficient. Loving care is a hallmark of human caring.

“They were in an emergency state, moving quickly, not trying to save her life, but to make things quiet. I went to the washroom and looked at myself in the mirror. ‘This can’t be the end,’ I thought. ‘I’m not ready!’

“It seems unbelievable, but, at this point, we were totally unprepared for Gabrielle to die. We had dealt with each step in her decline, but dying was always somewhere in the distant future. I finally realized that Gabrielle was dying, and that meant we needed to change our focus. When Adam arrived, I took him aside. ‘I think we have to tell Gabrielle that it’s okay for her to go,’ I told him. ‘We need to give her permission to die. I want to tell her how grateful we are for her.’ Adam agreed, so we took her into our arms. I sat behind her in the bed and cradled her and Adam and I asked for her forgiveness.”

“Adam said, ‘Gaby, this illness was not your fault. You did everything you could, and I’m so proud of you.’

“We told her how thankful we were to have her for our daughter and how much we loved her. We told her that she was a gift to us from God. And we told her that we were going to miss her, but that we would be okay. I told her again, as I had that other night, that I felt her grandparents would be there to greet her.

“It was an intense moment, a perfect moment. I can’t describe it. It was the worst thing—and yet it was the most intimate and important time. I felt so grounded and connected. It felt right—as though we were finally down to bedrock, living the basic truth of who we were to each other and what our lives were about. That’s what I felt with the three of us there in the middle of the night in that little bed. I remembered when Gabrielle was born and we both held her in our arms, except now the love that Adam and I shared was in her, and it was moving through all three of us and enveloping us."

We made a toast to her life and our family. She was grinning, lying there in front of the Christmas tree. She told her siblings it looked spectacular, and she ate some of the Kisses.

“Then, suddenly, she said she felt queasy. I went to the linen closet in the bathroom to get a fresh, damp face cloth. Gabrielle said to Claudette, ‘Oh, my mother takes so much time.’ I had just walked back and laid the cool cloth across her forehead when she looked out into the distance, almost as if she were surprised, took her last breath, closed her eyes, and died.”

Yvette describes Gabrielle’s last hours as a “perfect moment” and over the years I’ve thought a lot about what had made it perfect. When Yvette was finally able to accept the unacceptable—that her daughter was dying—it provided an opening into a realm of communication and connection with her daughter. She couldn’t change what was; she could only shift her attitude. She chose to see Gabrielle as a gift. For the rest of the day, she did all she could to honor and celebrate her daughter’s brief life.

Gabrielle understood that, too. Illness and impending death had made her wise beyond her years. When there was nothing left unsaid and Gabrielle and her parents had stopped denying her mortality, their remaining time together became a celebration.

Yvette remarked that the time she spent with Gabrielle during those final hours was strongly reminiscent of the time when Gabrielle was an infant. Mother and daughter would spend hours and hours staring at each other and cooing. Those last hours were exactly that—mother and daughter lost in a reverie of love for each other.

That kind of love is available to all of us. But to achieve it we must again become innocent. By this I mean that we must drop all preconceptions and pretense about ourselves and the world and freshly experience the wonder that is all around us. In so doing we are infused with the miracle of life, and we glow with amazement and awe. Every day is the first day of the world. By cracking open the shell of self-identity and laying us open to our essential selves, illness and impending death often force this fresh view of the world. This is what is meant by the expression “In dying we are newly born.”

It happened naturally for Gabrielle and her parents—and I’ve seen it happen often with families when someone is dying. There is intense joy that comes to us and we want to celebrate the true miracle of our love for one another.

Every life is a full life. No one can tell us how long we will live or when we will die. The best strategy is to live each day as fully as possible. As if it were the first day, or the last day of your life. Each moment can then become perfect.

I’ve seen this response to grief in both sexes, but more often in men than women. Particularly after a protracted debilitating illness, it’s as if the bereaved widower or widow has been grieving for so long that there is nothing left to grieve. Surviving spouses feel relieved and have an overpowering need to reinvest in life and the future. Does this reflect avoidance of pain on the part of the survivor? Maybe, but so what?"

The sorrow that Lisa feels cannot be minimized. Part of her died with her sister. Yet she feels intact and whole, fully engaged in life and looking toward the future. And Linda will never really leave her. Lisa sees a bit of her sister each time she looks in the mirror. But it’s a healthy Linda she sees, and a healthy Linda that she carries with her.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” Death makes us aware of the importance of the people we love and the sustaining force of love in our lives. When someone close to us is dying or has died, we can use love to burn through our grief and come to a place of gratitude for each other and for being alive."

“Man-speak” tends to occur when men are doing something together, shoulder to shoulder. The most important and poignant things are often said while men are looking ahead, in roughly the same direction, rather than at one another. So it was with Peter and his dad."

"

Peter’s own comfort with his father’s nonverbal ways of communicating allowed him to recognize subtle hints that his father had come to some peace with his illness.

Early on, Peter made the conscious decision to spend as much time as possible with his father.

Their tradition of nonverbal communication was perfect preparation for dealing with Paul’s dementia.

“As long as he could, I continued to take him on outdoor trips with me because we had been lifelong hunting and fishing partners. I tried to prolong whatever experiences we had shared over time. It made me feel good. As he declined and gun safety became an issue, I would take him hunting, but his gun would be empty. I would sit with him and we’d get up and wander. Even though he probably didn’t always know what we were doing, it was something familiar and enjoyable.

“It was my habit to talk to him about this or that, rarely anything of consequence. It was a way of passing time together. If he responded at all, it was just gibberish. There might be two or three full words, but even those were nonsensical. But once in a while, out of the blue, he’d give me a flat-out straight answer.

As important as words are, they are not the only means of conveying heartfelt thoughts and feelings. With few words, Peter and his father were still able to express their gratitude, love, and affection for each other.

Good-byes are the thing we dread most. In saying good-bye we acknowledge an inevitable separation. Yet life often becomes more precious (or, more accurately, the preciousness of life is often more clearly revealed) when we acknowledge our impermanence. If we are conscious of this impermanence as we say good-bye, each parting can remind us that our lives are precious."

"

By saying or conveying the essence of the Four Things, even painful farewells can contribute to the history and wholeness of love between two people. The Four Things can help us accept good-byes for what they are—an inevitable part of loving and a necessary part of full and healthy living!

As Ecclesiastes says, “To every thing there is a season. . . .” By saying good-bye in a conscious way, we offer the person we’re parting with our blessing and give them the gift of our love.

When someone close to us is dying, the awareness of this impending, final parting can wrench our soul. When the Four Things have been said, however—or their essence conveyed—good-bye can also be bittersweet, accompanied by a deepening awareness of who we are—of what it means to be human.

Daniel Schumann reveled in life. An Ivy League education and success in business enabled him to travel the world and enjoy life to its fullest. When Daniel was forced to confront the end of his life at age 39, it would have been understandable for him to “rage against the dying of the light.” For such an accomplished, vital man, saying good-bye might have seemed like a defeat. Daniel did not allow himself to get stuck in anger about things he couldn’t change. Instead, he played the cards he’d been dealt as smartly as possible. Daniel wrote his mother this last letter, so that she would never doubt that he lived fully and joyfully through the very end of life, and that even though his death was premature, he was ready to say good-bye.

Dear Mom,

This last part of my life could have been very unpleasant, but it wasn’t. In fact, in many ways, it has been the best part of my life. When you get down to it, I’d have to live several hundred years to fulfill all my dreams. I’ve done well with the time allotted me, so I have no regrets. I probably never would have slowed up enough to really appreciate all of you if it hadn’t been for my illness. That’s the silver lining in this very dark cloud. I feel sorry for people who die not having had the chance to fulfill some of their dreams, as I have.

If anyone ever asks you if I went to heaven, tell them this: I just came from there.

Love, Daniel

"

Each life has a beginning, middle, and end. What’s important is not how long but how deeply and fully we live. True enjoyment of life is not a passive experience: it’s about deliberately investing one’s life with joy. People who are dying have shown me that when we complete our relationships and celebrate the love that is at our core, we can realize Daniel’s “heaven on earth.”

Life presents us with a choice: we can choose to protect ourselves from emotional pain—or we can acknowledge our vulnerability and open ourselves to the loss that love will ultimately entail.

To love truly is inevitably to experience loss. We will die, and we will have to say good-bye to the people we love. We will have to leave them behind as we embark on that “journey from which no traveler returns.” Or those we love will die first, and we will have to let them go and learn to live on without them. You may already have had to let go of people you’ve loved."

The fact that any of us—and any of the people we love—could die at any time serves as a constant reminder to keep our relationships current.

"return of her wedding ring was meant as a gesture of love. She was giving him the freedom to go on and fall in love again. He described how, following her gesture, the waning days of Susan’s life were filled with caresses, kisses, words, and songs—every imaginable expression of the intensity and joy of their love."

"Susan also thought long and hard about a way to say good-bye to her six-year-old daughter that would also acknowledge and nurture their lifelong relationship. With the help of four close friends, as her disease progressed Susan made gifts and dictated messages for Allison to open at every birthday through the age of 20 and at major life events. These gifts and the messages they contain remain wrapped, awaiting birthdays, graduations, and a wedding that Susan will never see."

"

Living Fully Through to the End

Although fate would not allow her to be there in real time, Susan realized that through her gifts and messages she could project her caring and affection into the future. In this way she could provide Allison with a measure of motherly love and affirmation during the formative years and critical events of her young life. Susan hoped her preparation would ease her family’s pain at her premature death and reluctant good-bye. In taking care of her husband and daughter in this way, she was also taking care of herself. The project gave meaning to her days and, ever so slightly, eased her own grief at the impending loss they shared.

Susan said good-bye in a conscious way, turning her parting into a gift for the people closest to her that she was leaving behind. She blessed them with her love and made them feel that she was with them even when she was no longer physically present. Even when Susan was gone, she lived on inside her daughter, and her gifts to her child are reminders to us that some good-byes can last a lifetime.

I’ve come to understand the importance of celebration. I’ve observed that among relatives and close friends, when there is nothing more to do or say, “celebration happens.” People naturally, almost inevitably, celebrate their relationship and love for one another. People who are dying have taught me that we don’t have to wait until a wake or memorial service to do this. We don’t, in fact, have to wait until we’re dying. Celebrations are more fun when the person being celebrated is present."

"the doctor on one side and me on the other, and he said to me, ‘Your mother has passed.’ ‘What?’ I said. But then I looked at her and she was gone. I had never been so close to death before, but it wasn’t eerie. She was luminous, and I was astonished. I thought, ‘My God, this is like giving birth to a child.’ ”"