Forgiveness?

       on Saturday, I went with my friends to see "the Reader," a classic story addressing issues of guilt and innocence.  Here's the setup: a teenage boy starts having a torrid *and i mean SEXY* love affair with an older woman (hello Mrs. Robinson!).  She's kind of a nut, but he's head over heels for her- until she leaves without any notice, and he never sees her again.  Ten years later, she's on trial for being a Nazi S.S. Guard, something our dear little boy never knew about.  He's in law school, observing the trial, and he's wracked with guilt over the trial, the proceedings, and what determines guilt.  The movie is good, but not amazing, but I really enjoyed the issues the film raised.  

        in the movie, we are forced to examine our perspectives on guilt.  Should all Germans feel guilty for being part of the Holocaust?  Is it ever right to kill someone, even if it's your job and you do it mercifully?  Our S.S. women tried very hard to be a merciful guard-although all of the other women on trial say that she was the leader of them all.  A specific incident in question  brings a survivor and her daughter to the stand to testify, saying that the guards did not help them get out of a burning barn, in which they were all trapped.  This incident seals the deal, and our women goes to jail for twenty years, even though she wasn't the primary protagonist in the crime.  It was so interesting to see this issue from a different viewpoint- we always sympathize with the Jewish people (as we should!), but it was so fascinating to feel sympathy for the other side.  

As a western culture, we tend to lump together the individuals with their national policy (middle east!, the Christian right, etc.  It made me reexamine my viewpoints about these issues, since I have these views as well.  However, it's these ideas of "eye for an eye" that lead us to mass destruction and war and hate, and if we were able to peaceably forgive, we wouldn't have these issues.  Forgiveness is so hard- I have issues with it, and I'm hardly a high profile person.  The perfect example of this is the Dalai Lama, and his views on China.  Even though China has continually done terrible things to Tibet and his people, he is able to calmly approach the issue and not desire vengeance.  I suppose if we are able take this huge idea and put it into our lives in small ways, maybe things can improve.  

If someone cuts you off on the freeway, rather than speeding past them in another lane, just letting it go.  If someone doesn't hold a door for you or an elevator or something small, just letting it go.  I'm not trying to equate a holocaust with day to day grievances, but instead trying to think how I can learn something from this situation.  I think that peaceful resolution is the best way to solve things, especially after watching lots of gratuitous violence in the new movie "the Watchmen."  Maybe if we can learn to let go of the little things, others will catch on, and the movement will grow, and there will be less need for human-caused hate and suffering.