FORGIVE AND BE FREE

THE 14th Dalai Lama arrived in Ireland for his first visit in 20 years last month.
The 76-year-old exiled Tibetan leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who fled his country in 1959 spoke on universal responsibility and the individual's responsibility to take action for change at sold out events in Dublin, Kildare and Limerick.

One of the underlying themes was on forgiving those who had hurt us. Sitting in the audience was heartbroken Tyrone Gaelic football manager Mickey Harte whose daughter, Michaela McAreavey, 27, was found strangled in her hotel room. She had been on honeymoon on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Judging from the responses from the audience, I could see that no one was spared the agony of carrying grievances, both recent and long past.
Of late, I have decided to take advantage of the sunny weather to plant potatoes. I have the privilege of having strong arms to plough and break up the topsoil.

All I had to do was to arrange potatoes at selected distances from each other.

As the tubers grew, I had to top up the soil until the potatoes were ready for harvesting. If I did not do that the potatoes would not reach optimum growth and would be choked by weeds before they could be harvested for the cooking pot.

Using this potato planting allegory, we have to consciously invest time and energy to see dreams come true. However, many of us are also unconsciously caught up in an intricate web of grievances and nursing them when we continue to playback hurtful memories with dogged insistence.

Just like adding more top soil to the potato tubers, we feed our wounds and increase the pain.

If we can harvest potatoes, we can also pull out the hurt by the roots so that it grows no more.

I was in Derry in Northern Ireland recently and saw first hand the impact of pain and hurt.

A certain enclave still stands with the words "We will not surrender" and the Bogside murals testify to the atrocities of war.

There is one mural named "The Death of Innocence", which commemorates the death of 14-year-old Annette McGavigan who was the 100th victim of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and one of the first children to be killed.

The little coloured stones at the foot of the mural are the objects she was collecting for a school project when she was shot.

As in many wars, the innocent are caught in between just like the Malay proverb Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelanduk mati di tengah-tengah (When elephants fight, mousedeer die in the middle).

Forgiveness is the first step towards taking action for change, though it is easier said than done.

Being human, forgiving someone who has wronged us is like physically removing a mountain with our bare hands.

When we cannot forgive, it is us who suffer, not the perpetrator. Paradoxical but true.

Yet, when we will ourselves to forgive a person, the release is immense. We can actually feel the shackles falling off, the same shackles that have kept us captive for so long and we wonder why we had not forgiven sooner.

Some say wounds will heal but scars remain to remind.

I think true freedom comes when you see the scar but you no longer feel any animosity towards the person who hurt you in the first place.

A beautiful example is Richard Moore, who was blinded when he was 10 years old in Derry in 1972.

Charles Innes, a British soldier, had fired a rubber bullet at point blank range into his face.

Moore said: "You can take away my sight, but you cannot take away my vision, which is to help impoverished children all over the world."

Moore went on to found Children in Crossfire, an Irish-based international development charity, which envisages a world where every child can realise his rights.

In fact, the Dalai Lama's visit to Ireland was on the personal invitation of Moore.

Innes was also in the audience and Moore had forgiven him.