Fairness - The Commentary

  “I know this one thing to be true: You do not need to forgive a person who has hurt you in order to free yourself from the pain of negative emotions. You can even reach a place of love and compassion for the wrongdoer without forgiving a particular action or inaction. You are not a less loving or whole person if there are certain things you do not forgive, and certain people whom you choose not to see. Perhaps you are even a stronger or more courageous person if you have leftover anger, whether from one violation or countless little micro-violations, even as you move on. More importantly, it is no one else’s job – not that of your therapist, mother, teacher, spiritual guide, best friend, or relationship expert - to tell you to forgive – or not to.” Those are some of the eye-opening insights author and therapist Harriet Lerner included in her 2017 book: Why Won’t You Apologize? – Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts as she analyzes what makes a real and healthy apology. And ...

There’s an old saying: “There’s nothing as beautiful as gray hair and a long beard.” It comes from traditional China, not twenty-first century America. You would have guessed that, right? It’s definitely not an expression out of American pop culture. In the US, our view of what is beautiful, especially for women, is a twenty-something-year-old or a “young-looking” thirty-something. Imagine those thirty-somethings worried that they don’t look young anymore! We’re conditioned to be attracted to youthful looks from our first exposure to our culture, and to criticize ourselves as we show the natural results of aging. If we’ve been thoroughly conditioned, we even feel that wrinkles, gray hair, “age spots,” sagging, and drooping are like diseases to fight. That’s good news for the bottom-line of so many of the distributors of the products they want to sell us. Like most views of beauty that have existed in history, definitions of what is attractive are dominated by current economics. Queen E...