For One More Day- Forgive Yourself

When you’re rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.

I had no one to talk me out of my despair, and that was a mistake. You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.
(extracted from For One More Day)

My greatest take from this novel is the importance of being able to forgive yourself.

Charley Benetto adores his father since young, only to see him leaving his mother when Charley is on the verge of adolescence. With regards to baseball, Charley is as passionate as his father.

Years later, after Charley is married, on his mother’s seventy-ninth birthday, his father calls him to invite him to play in an Old Timers game. Though Charley is a bit hesitant to accept the offer, he cannot bear to reject his Dad; so he fakes an excuse, lies to his mother, wife and daughter and flies off. As he is reminiscing (remembering / recollecting past experiences) the glory of his days as a young energetic baseball player while swinging his bat, his mother collapsed at his hometown due to a massive heart attack. Charley thus misses the only opportunity to bid farewell to his mother. As he drives home through the night, he is tormented more by guilt than by shock and grief. Since then, his life has been destroyed by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits rock bottom after discovering that he won’t be invited to his only daughter’s wedding, and this is the most crucial thing that drives him to commit suicide.



Clearly, as Charley cannot let go of the immense guilt deeply engraved in his heart due to his irrevocable decision, he submits himself to alcohol and his relationships with his loved ones inevitably deteriorates. He does not confide to his loved ones anymore and becomes “ornery (grumpy) and distant”. He imagines himself suffering all alone. He shuts everybody out from his own world until he meets his dead mother...

It is a well-known fact that hurting people hurt others. The longer you
avoid forgiving yourself, the longer you allow yourself to harbor the feelings that you deserve to suffer for what you did, the more explosive you will become and, therefore, the more apt you are to hurt others. (extracted from http://www.allaboutgod.com/forgiving-yourself.htm)

Personally, I had been through this experience before. (Refer to last year’s August entry 4/4- Bane of my Teaching Career) The feeling was terrible once I realized that I had vented my frustration on another group of innocent pupils. I resolved this problem by confessing my sin to God and asking God to teach me how to be a firmer and more righteous teacher. After that, the healing gradually took place and I have never since repeated that mistake again.

Teaching is a life-giving career. If we persistently dwell on our sins and cannot forgive ourselves, then we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and to move on with life and with God. How can we then overcome our obstacles when we are stuck in our misery? How can we then encourage our students to stretch their limits when we already believe that it is impossible for us to impact others?

Forgive yourself. Let go of whatever you are holding against yourself. You can let the healing begin...