On forgiving and forgetting

Midway Saturday Evening Service two days ago, it suddenly dawned upon me it was the first time in six weeks I had been there. Being finally back there, after being absent for the previous five weeks for a whole assortment of reasons, it felt like I had just came home.

Amazingly, none of the reasons had to do with "work" per se, which is my reporting internship with AP Singapore. Other than a church event resulting in the cancelling of SES in one of the weeks, my absence had more to do with VCF meetings on Saturdays, and last week, Joanne-Jianming's wedding.

The sermon had to do with forgiving and letting go of past hurts, which coming in the weekend of Father's Day, did remind me of my relationship with my dad.

But I didn't quite know what to make of the sermon because while I have kind of made that decision to let go of my "right" a couple of years ago to blame my dad for being absent, I still do not talk to my dad like most "normal" people do.

We are not a family that is all "love and hugs" and do not subscribe to all that idyllic stuff. In fact, some times when he is being stubborn and stay rooted at the family PC engrossed in his tetris or solitaire game till the wee hours of the morning, I get really pissed with him because he keeps making mom yell at him to get off the computer, in the same way she would yell at her kids to do the same.

My family was never the kind where children actually have a good, healthy and nurturing relationship with the parents, and I doubt it would ever be.

But I am not so sure if it should therefore be perceived as a "problem" because forgiving my parents and letting go of my right to blame my parents for being "traditionally Asian" and becoming all lovey dovey with them overnight are two quite separate things altogether. After all, there are families where things are all seemingly all so nice and all, but the relations between parents and kids leaves more to be desired.

Some people I spoke to on the eve of Father's Day were shocked my family don't celebrate the occasion with a special family get-together of any sorts.

They automatically assumed that this equates to needing to give my dad a hug to show I love him and all since this means my familial relations are in shambles. But while I still don't have it within me to say I "love" him, I think there are other ways that people express love and concern.

So while I am perfectly aware this may sound like I am justifying the status quo, I also don't think there is a need to put myself on an unnecessary guilt trip about how my family is far from the "ideal" type. It takes much longer than a few years to undo a life-time of perceived hurt.

Besides, ideal types do not take into consideration nuances in reality. I guess as long as I am not like blaming him like I used to, I should be okay. I guess.

However, I must admit while my relationship with particularly my dad is very much a works-in-progress, I do wonder if more can be done about it. Our relationship is very functional, we don't ignore each other at home, but our conversations are on a need-to basis and usually functional. I try to understand his position, but forcing the issue is not exactly it either.

The pastor, in all good intentions, said something about not waiting for our fathers to be at their deathbeds before we show our love for them.

Call my cynical if you would, but while that is true and something I/we should be working towards, should we therefore react emotionally and force the issue when the other person, in this case, my dad, is baffled and does not even think there is anything "wrong" with how things are?

I might have come to a point where I have forgiven my dad, but I think that had to come first from forgiving myself, for perceiving my dad as intentionally hurting me when he is absent when it was never that way.

It is just the way he is, to him, fatherhood is about providing and if you look at it objectively, however mangled this concept has become, there is actually nothing really wrong with that.

But whether forgetting entails not acknowleding the reality of any situation, in treating relationships without considering its historical contingency and socio-cultural background, is quite simply living in a bubble that deserves to be burst for all its worth because the result would be constant frustration otherwise.

Ideal types are meant to be yardsticks for us to work towards, but they shouldn't strangle us. Particularly with parents, since we cannot choose them, we have to try to accept them for who and what they are, because as a song by Vertical Horizon sometime back goes, they are "the best we (will) ever have."