Memoirs of an Amnesiac

With a book opened to a story's page, I stood in front of a beaming class, waiting for me to take them to another land way back in time and to discover two characters and their internal conflicts. I noticed that for several days now, my students have left the valuing part to me. It used to be that we go through that phase together. Now they seemed to have left me on my own, with the reins on that process.

At other times, it takes on a smooth flow, most especially when the lessons do not affect me. But on that day, the lesson touched me deep in the raw and I hoped my students didn't notice my puffy eyes as I asked them at the beginning of my class, "How do you define forgiveness?"

You can only imagine my uncalled for disgust as I reviewed that day's lesson. Why of all days, will I have to talk about forgiveness on that day? When the night before I learned that my ex cheated on me?

Tell me, how do you expound with depth what one feels when one has been betrayed and expect that person to just forget the whole thing as if it is just someone else's number they need not store in their phone books? I could not just tell them that it is going to be fine when I myself am going through the same phase. It is not easy. I would rather be stoned to death than face what I faced that day.

Then I realized that the greatest measure of a virtue (the perfect state of a certain value) is when one is at the point of deciding. You will never know kindness unless you let some stranger get into your house and feed him. You will never know patience unless you wait in line for hours. You will never know fairness unless someone gets to be jailed for a wrong act.

Forgiveness therefore is forgiving even when it hurts so bad. For that virtue only ceases to be just a group of letters when one chooses to forgive amidst pain and suffering. Pain and suffering brought about most especially by people you care so much above everyone else.

I didn't have the guts to use my own personal experience to illustrate forgiveness (It is so abstract one needs a very concrete example.) on that day. I just couldn't.

While I stood there struggling against myself and the virtues I want my students to learn, I cried deep inside. Truly time will heal all my wounds but being there and having my emotions put to a test was something I couldn't forget.

I know everybody deserves a second chance. Yet I just couldn't give it at that moment when I failed my own test.