Forgiveness (from my book)

The key to true friendship and love is being sincere and being honest enough to say you are sorry or that you were wrong. When you say you are sorry, you must really mean it. I screw up a lot, but I try my best to be a good person and admit when I am wrong. That's why it is so easy for me to accept an apology from others when they do or say something unkind to me. I look at like this: we all wipe our butts the same way. All that means is we are all equal; no one is better than anyone else. It hurts the most when someone close to you does something bad to you, and it will be the hardest to forgive that person because you have so much love for him or her. But you will feel so much more joy when you forgive that person because the burden was the heaviest when you were carrying it around with you, like a thirty-pound weight around your heart. Whenever we do something that will hurt someone we love, there is always a reason for doing it. Whether it was because we were only thinking about ourselves, we didn't think before we did it, or we just didn't care, there is always a reason. When we screw up, we really should figure out what the reason for the screw up was so that we don't do it again. If we excuse it again, then there is a problem because it's becoming a nasty habit.