Sorry Seems To Be The Easiest Word

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf
Well maybe its OK to just be mad. To own the feeling, to play with it to struggle with it, to hold it. But what makes us respond the way we do? What makes us mad, What pulls us down. What lifts us up. What puts us on the "High". I wonder how much truth there is in regaining our past. For some of us the past can be a scary place, that we wish to not revisited because it cuts us to our weakest and most vulnerable state. I know for me it seems to just rattle my insides and brings back hurt and pain. That doesn't mean that forgiveness and healing has not happened to the contrary it means in my life that, the past is more real to me and effects my actions and my understandings of life.
You see whether we like it or not the past will always be part of our present.

I have been struggling with my Dad lately (My Mom & Dads relationship was a big hurt in my Past) and was trying to explain to him that the reason that I react in a certain way or the reason i seem not to respond to him in the way he wants. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. You see my Dad seems to think that because he said sorry it erases the past. Of course it erases a movement of hurt and underlying grudge but it doesn't seem to take away the effect the past has had on me. I am scared to engage with my Dad in fear of being hurt or neglected or not being worthy enough. Unfortunately my past experiences dictated my future dealings with him.
But I do feel this is not a thing that is just between me and my dad. I feel it is allot bigger than I in my experiences of the past. Look at Apartheid we are sorry and there has been a reconciliation but that doesn't mean that there is still not a repocution (Sorry Spelling) of those actions. Then look at the conflict in the Middle East. I red a great blog from my friend Julie Martin and her story also links with the past and how today we are feeling and dealing with it in a apologising South Africa.Maybe the time has come for us to stop running from our past and own it. Some people are scared of that and that's OK but we have to understand the future. Be careful how we respond. Look at peoples responses. Sorry is the easiest world but it needs to be proceeded by understanding to make it a true word. This doest mean we hold onto the past and do not let it go cause to live only in the past is to live out of balance. That's why life comes in 3 forms. Past, Present and Future. Our past is a way to understand or present and make a positive step to our future. I don't know if i am speaking twak but it feels real to me.Gareth I just wanted to say thank you for introducing me to the great forms of expression and depth found in the art of William Kentridge.I don't know if you remember most of these images come from the exhibition we went at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. You taught me art, I showed you the World of Beer. How bizarre