Today's fortune: January 30, 2011

Today's fortune: Time heals all wounds. Keep your chin up.

The biggest wound I have is the self-inflicted one I got a few weeks ago as a result of this blog:

Fortunately, the tattoo is all healed up now. I was worried about the letter F for a while. It was totally F'd up. But now, I'm pretty sure I'll live.

I think back to the history of my physical wounds, and I've been fairly lucky. I've never broken a bone (now that I've jinxed myself, I'm sure I'll break several tomorrow), and I've only needed stitches once, during youth baseball, when the hardest-throwing pitcher in the league clocked me on the chin with his best fastball. If not for that incident, I'd think I was damn near indestructible.

Subtitle: The Matt Kelsey Story

But just because you can't see them doesn't mean I don't have wounds. Just like everybody else walking this earth, I have wounds on the inside. Some of them are buried deep enough, I don't even know about them.

I appreciate today's fortune, though. "Time heals all wounds." Because in the past, I've had trouble letting go of grudges (another word for "wounds"), and I've had trouble forgiving those who caused the grudges.

Two silly ones come to mind from my adolescence. I thought about these examples recently and realized I had never truly forgiven these people or forgotten about these incidents.

When I was in junior high school, a kid borrowed a dollar from me to buy a can of soda. He never paid me back. And I never forgave him.

In high school, I was playing poker with two fellow students. On school grounds. With money. Probably would have been frowned upon, had any staff members found out. After losing a couple bucks to one of the guys, I discovered after the game that the two had conspired to cheat me out of my dough. I never forgave them, either, even though I'm pretty sure they gave my money back.

I think it's time to forgive. Time has healed these wounds, and I can let my feelings go.

I forgive you, junior high school dollar borrower. May your cans of soda taste forever sweet.

I forgive you, high school poker swindlers. May your river cards bring flushes and straights.

That was therapeutic. It feels good to let go of your grudges.

Give it a try sometime.