The final of my daft little explorations into three philosophical words over the closed Christmas period leads to a crescendo after introducing the first two: the pursuit of kindness and understanding.
Only when we have explored these two areas can we reach a situation where it may be possible to forgive someone.
In the modern world, we are considerably lacking in the ability to apply the principle of forgiveness to people, and forgiveness is essential if we are ever to move forward and are ever to move on from some of the darkest times and the most difficult experiences that we have encountered (both as individuals and as humans).
In order to forgive, it is essential to be able to forget.
If you have ever entered into a significant conflict with another human being, which you have had the opportunity to resolve, you will understand that it's only through forgetting that we can properly forgive; it's only through the ability to forget whatever the indiscretion or insult was in order to reach a situation where we can move on in peace and calm and harmony with the individual or individuals with whom we were at odds.
In order to do that, we must understand those people; we must also understand that most of us are better than the worst thing that we have ever done or even the worst thing that we have just done a minute ago, but we live in a world which doesn't allow this to happen.
The expansion and explosion of social media over the past 15 years or so has led to a situation where there is no separation between personal and public conversation.
It means the phrases and utterances that were meant to be between a small group of people or even only two people can now be between you and the whole world.
It means that we suffer from a situation that has become known as 'context collapse' where things that are said can be taken in small snippets and sound bites and used to portray people as the worst people in the world with absolutely no mechanism for forgiveness.
And so as you judge people on social media based on 90 characters or a small sound bite or video of what they've done, perhaps better to sit back to try to understand the individual to try to gain an insight into the context in which the transgression or indiscretion has occurred and try to apply the principle of kindness; imagine it was you who was being scrutinised; then it might be easier to forgive someone, then it might be easier for all of us to begin to forgive people that we thought we were at odds with so that we can move on into a world of understanding, into a world of just a little bit more kindness because f*ck knows if we are unable to do this, the snowball will keep rolling down the hill and things will get worse and worse, more and more separated and more and more toxic.
I choose to believe that it's possible for us to do this.
Perhaps kindness, understanding, and forgiveness should be my New Year's resolutions.
Blog Post Number - 4033